PSU Magazine Winter 2006

University of Oregon's and University of Washington's bookstores, as well as the cooperatives at Harvard and Yale. The original cost of membership was 25 cents per year. "It was really designed as a buying group; they wanted to reduce costs," Brown says. ij anport was isolated, remembers Bill Lemman, former Vanport sLudent, Portland State administrator, and eventual Oregon UniversiLy SysLem chancellor. The nearest grocery store was in St. Johns, miles away. JK Gill, the now-defunct stationery business in downtown Portland, was the area's main college textbook seller. At first, Lemman says, the co-op staff went to a wholesaler to buy cases of items needed by the student fami– lies, then added a little margin for their 197 - By Lisa Loving own expenses. "Everybody was on a shoestring then," Lemman says "This was just a method of saving money-it wasn't until the second or third year that the co-op started selling books at all." In the end, the Gill family came forward to help place textbooks in the co-op at Vanport. "Mark Gill was instrumental in striking the relationship with the col– lege," Lemman says. Russ Laney, now deceased, became store manager. Russ is Lhe one who had the idea to set up a coffee counter in the co-op; he sold his brew for a nickel a cup. of sidewalk folk musicians. For 30 years the co-o made the SW Hall and Sixth Avenue location its home. When it moved and the space was reno– vated for the Center for Student Health and Coun– seling, the original graphics were found behind wall paneling. "They started calling it [the store] 'The Home of Five-Cent Joe'," Lemman says. "When it started it wasn't bigger than two living rooms put together. " From Lhe beginning, only members of the co-op could serve on the board, and the board hired the manager. lt became a vibrant community of some 1,200 students and their families. On Memorial Day, 1948, the levees along the Columbia River gave way after a winter season of unusually high snowfall. A wall of water swept Vanport off the map , never to return. The co-op's $15 ,000 inventory was also wiped out, according to the 1950 Vanport yearbook. Yet with the help of "creditors and a prosperous fiscal period" the store was back in business and solvent within eight months in the school's new location: another aban– doned Kaiser shipyard site, the Oregon Shipyard Corporation's administration building in St. Johns. The co-op not only ran a store in the improved facility but also operated the cafeteria and a dry cleaning service. "Co-ops were not unusual-other universities had them," say Lemman, who served on the co-op board for so many years he was named a life mem– ber and given an engraved plaque when he retired. "But what was remarkable is that the PSU co-op lasted from 0ooded-out Vanport until we relocated to the Urban Center in 2000. " f or years, observers have wondered whether PSU's Bookstore co-op would go the way of Yale's. That august insti– tution suffered financially after Barnes &: Noble wrestled away Yale's textbook franchise in the co-op's longtime cam– pus storefront. The co-op was forced to relocate, and its management decided a private company should take over the store's day-to-day operations. Within months, both Yale co-op and the private management company went bankrupt. College textbook sales are consid– ered a tough industry because they represent such a specialized retail niche. "lf book selling is a hard business, selling textbooks is atrocious," WINTER 2006 PSU MAGAZINE 21