Tsunami Books Seeks to Buy South Eugene Building, Securing Its Future

Scott Landfield is asking the College Hill neighborhood to help him do something the community has pulled off before: save Tsunami Books.

The owners of Tsunami Books in South Eugene want to purchase the building and its 10,000-square-foot lot on Willamette Street. In a social media post, Tsunami Books staff said the building's owners are open to selling, and that if the store can commit about $200,000 to the sale, they could possibly close the deal by Nov. 1.

Landfield serves as president and general manager of Tsunami Books Incorporated, a Sub-Chapter S Corporation with 460 shares, located at 2585 Willamette Street. The store transformed from a near-bankrupt shop into a cultural hub thanks to its innovative neighborhood shareholding model. That model has been tested before.

The used bookstore was in danger of closing years ago, but a community effort kept the doors open following a lease change in 2018, and now owners are turning to the community for support once again. That 2018 episode was itself the second time Landfield had leaned on the community to keep the lights on. During an earlier fight over his lease, Landfield figured if he could show five years' worth of rent in hand, the landlord might let him stay, so he started his own crowdfunding pledge drive and quickly raised $125,000.

Tsunami Books has been in business since 1995 and has been a community hub not only for the sale of new and used books, but also workshops, music, community gatherings and arts of other kinds. Over the course of its years on Willamette Street, the store has hosted over 3,000 community activities, including author events, ongoing writers' workshops, poetry slams, musical concerts, art openings, spiritual gatherings, and local and regional political events. That stage has hosted everyone from local artists to Grammy Award-winning bluegrass musician Billy Strings.

Tsunami Books began in 1995 with $500. Landfield has been a worker/owner for 29 years; his parents each owned bookstores in the Midwest at times in their lives between newspaper work, and Landfield came to Oregon in 1978 to plant trees, spending over a 20-year career planting more than 2 million of them.

Purchasing the building outright would remove the lease uncertainty that has shadowed the store for years. The $200,000 figure communicated by the building's owners represents the commitment threshold needed to potentially finalize the transaction by November 1, though the precise structure of the payment, whether a deposit, down payment, or other vehicle, has not been publicly detailed.

For more information about the store and the purchase effort, visit Tsunami Books' website at tsunamibooks.org or its Facebook page.