Old Goat Books marks permanent return at previous Marbles Restaurant location in Waterloo

Almost nine months after a fire forced the beloved Uptown Waterloo bookstore to close, Old Goat Books has found a new permanent home down the street.

The bookstore opened its doors on Saturday morning, welcoming customers to their new spot: 8 William St. E.

Despite multiple opportunities for different locations, bookstore owner Erica Nikolaus landed on the former location of Marbles Restaurant, which closed permanently in 2020.

“This is a beautiful building. It’s an established building in the community,” she said. “We’ve had numerous people come in and tell us stories of their memories of Marbles and their memories of this building. So, that’s really nice to have sort of a head start.”

The bookstore was already seeing a lot of foot traffic through the shelves on its first day.

Nikolaus said she was already hearing a lot of positive feedback, with one customer telling her the bookstore didn’t even look brand new.

“Somebody told us it looked like we had always been here,” Nikolaus said. “That it looked like a bookstore [that] had been here for a long time. So, that’s a great review.”

Others had told staff the environment looked magical.

Bianca Jamal was one of the customers who agreed with this sentiment.

“I’m so happy, it’s reopened beautifully,” said Jamal. “It’s similar [to the former bookstore] but it’s even prettier than I expected and it’s already so rich and full. It’s really exciting.”

Old Goat Books original location resided in a unit at 99 King St. N. before a fire in December 2024 damaged their store and thousands of books.

The store was forced to close as they assessed the damage.

Following the fire, the bookstore had its fair share of challenges with two different temporary locations, multiple financial support efforts and a restoration effort for around 20,000 books damaged from the smoke.

But by August, the store was able to close their temporary location at 35 King St. N., and start a new chapter.

“It just sort of all came together quickly,” said Nikolaus. “That meant that we had to pack up the books quickly and move everything over. We had a lot of help from the community, a lot of help from some great people. So, it was a lot of work, but it was fun.”

And luckily, the restoration efforts for the books didn’t go to waste.

“Almost all of them, a good portion of them were restored and they did a wonderful job. I mean, it’s amazing what science can do and amazing what a lot of hard work and elbow grease can do,” said Nikolaus.

The bookstore also had financial help from the community, with over half of their $45,000 goal on GoFundMe raised by opening day.

Multiple pop-up sales at Princess Cinemas also helped the store get back on their feet.

“I’ve always known that the book community is a very kind and generous community but I was blown away,” said Nikolaus. “...People were extremely generous. I still think about that and it was lovely… the amount of generosity that’s come our way, that’s worth its weight in gold.”