Lakeville Books and Stationary Opens Second Location in Former Great Barrington Book Loft

When Darryl Peck opened Lakeville Books & Stationery in Lakeville, Connecticut, in early April, he thought he was settling into what he calls a “retirement project.” Then, less than a week later, a customer walked in with news: Great Barrington’s longtime bookstore, The Bookloft, was closing.

“I just instantly went, ‘Oh no,’” he recalls. “Because I knew we were going to have to save it. There’s just no question. The town could not be without a bookstore.”

And just like that, the new Lakeville Books & Stationery has two storefronts: the older sibling at 329 Main Street in Lakeville, born in April, and its Irish twin in Great Barrington, Route 7 at 63 State Road, opening just last month.

Two openings, one whirlwind timeline

While it took Peck and his daughter and store manager, Alice, nearly a year to find and secure the Lakeville location, Great Barrington unfolded at a very different speed and under much different circumstances. The town’s only remaining bookstore and a fixture for decades, had entered bankruptcy proceedings when Peck got involved.

The Bookloft’s potential disappearance hit a nerve. Founded in 1974, the store had long served as a cultural anchor in Great Barrington, a place where locals and visitors alike browsed, lingered, and returned again and again. Its loss would have left a conspicuous gap in town culture.

“I had just spent a year building a new store,” Peck says. “It opened five days earlier. And I kind of knew we were about to tackle another project.”

For months, the outcome remained uncertain. Peck had to wait for the bankruptcy process to play out before moving forward, using the time to walk the town and consider alternatives. Again and again, he came back to the same conclusion: the Bookloft’s longtime home on Route 7 was still the right place for a bookstore to be.

Final approval came through bankruptcy court on October 3. Four weeks later, Lakeville Books & Stationery opened its Great Barrington doors, fully stocked and renovated. “We ordered and received about 20,000 items,” Peck says. “Finished renovations and everything else that we did.”

It was fast, but not unfamiliar. Over a career spanning more than five decades, Peck has built somewhere between 25 and 30 retail stores. “We’ve gotten it down,” he says.

A long road to books

Before bookstores, Peck built a career in technology and large-scale retail. In the early 1990s, he ran a Macintosh software company in Lakeville. In 1995, he helped launch one of the first internet retail businesses in the world, Outpost.com, selling computer products online before Amazon even existed. Later came PeachMac, an independent Apple reseller that grew to 14 stores across the Southeast before being sold to GameStop in 2014.

After that, Peck tried slowing down. He bought a restaurant. “That grew insanely tiresome,” he says.

Then he turned to ancient technology: Books. In 2019, while living in Georgia, Peck opened a bookstore on St. Simons Island, later adding a coffee shop. The store was successful, but the family decided it was time to return home to Lakeville. 

Why bookstores still matter

Peck is quick to say that loving books is not a business strategy. “I eat a lot of pizza,” he says. “That’s a really lousy reason to open a pizza shop.”

What drew him in was his own personal love of reading—and data. After selling the restaurant, he found himself reading constantly and came across reporting that showed print book sales rising as digital sales declined. “I thought, that can’t be right,” he says. “So I did a ton of research. And it not only was right, it was very right.”

The deeper he looked, the clearer the appeal became. Independent bookstores weren’t surviving by nostalgia alone, they were evolving into places people wanted to spend time. “No one’s making a lot of money selling books,” Peck says. “But I love retail. Once it gets in your blood, it’s hard to get out.”

Retail as craft

Peck doesn’t talk about bookstores as community centers or lifestyle brands. He talks about them as carefully tuned machines, spaces where every detail matters.

“I do all of our buying,” he says. “It’s having the right product on the shelves. Merchandising it correctly. Displaying it correctly. Lighting it correctly. Customer service above and beyond.”

That philosophy extends well beyond books. Lakeville Books & Stationery carries roughly 1,700 notebooks and 1,600 pens, sourced from around the world, alongside a tightly curated book selection that leans visual. Lakeville captures customers’ eyes with art, design, architecture, cooking, gardening, and more. Inventory shifts constantly, guided by observation, and patience. “It takes two years to really understand what a customer base wants,” Peck says. “Right now, we’re guessing a lot.”

Before opening in Great Barrington, Peck’s staff worried aloud about visibility. Would people know the store was there? Would they come back to Route 7 for a new bookstore?

“They kept saying, ‘Is anyone going to come?’” Peck recalls. “I said, don’t worry about it.”

On opening morning, cars were already waiting in the parking lot before the doors unlocked.

“It hasn’t stopped since,” he says.

A month in, Peck still sounds caught off guard by the response. “Everyone walks in and says, ‘Oh my god, this is great. Thank you for doing this.’ That’s a lovely way to spend the day.”

Now dividing his time between Lakeville and Great Barrington, Peck is often behind the counter himself—selling books, talking with customers, watching how people move through the space. For all his years running large companies, this is the smallest operation he’s ever led, and the one that might just suit him best.

As the holiday season fills both stores with browsers, regulars, and returning Bookloft loyalists, Peck sounds less like someone easing into retirement than someone who’s excited about starting a new position they always wanted.

“It’s Christmas in New England,” he says. “The stores are packed. We’re having a blast.”