Games People Play: High Tech Store Opens For Four Months in Harvard Square Locale

Would you open up a business in a prominent Mass Ave., location only to be forced to close four months later? That's what Carol Monica, owner of The Games People Play, has decided to do.

Construction of a four story office building on Mass Ave., Between Plympton and Linden Streets will begin next March, according to John Niles '54, chairman of North Coast Properties, which owns the entire block except for Briggs and Briggs Music Store. Niles said he will ask the six stores to leave the 90-year-old building during the project, which will take at least 15 months. The construction will boost rents to levels comparable to similar locations on Mass Ave., he added.

Monica, who already has another high-tech games store at 1105 Mass Ave., says she is glad to have the chance to "test the waters of Harvard Square at a prime selling time," even if it is only a temporary chance.

Monica added that she is planning to pack up and leave the location for good when it is torn down next March unless she receives an offer from the Niles company to move back in. She says returning to the renovated site will mean weighing the benefits of the location against higher rent of the new store. But setting up a new store for such a short period of time was not such a risky venture, according to Monica. "The costs of setting up the store were low, especially since Pangloss left all of their shelves in the store," she said.

When Pangloss Book shop learned that the Boston-area Niles Company was going to fear down the building, it started looking for other locations. When the bookstore moved into its new Mt. Auburn St. home in September, Monica saw her chance to pick up on the Harvard Square foot traffic and set up shop in the vacated Mass Ave. property.

Niel Romen of Pangloss said that since the store's move from Mass Ave., proprcturs have noticed a drop in "street business," namely, magazine sales. He added that he hopes Schoenhof's February move to Mt. Auburn St. will create a "bookstore row, even though the stores will not be next door to each other, as they were on Mass Ave."

Punched

Schoenhof's will move to 76 Mt. Auburn Street in the basement of the building of the Spec Club, according to a Schoenhof's spokesman.