Tucson book lovers rejoice! Stacks Book Club, the popular Oro Valley bookstore and coffee bar, is opening a second location, closer to home.
The new space, at , on Tucson’s Sunshine Mile, is a massive leap forward for co-owners Lizzy and Crispin Jeffrey-Franco, who initially began the Oro Valley shop as a small pop-up bookstore.
Stacks Book Club started as a pop-up bookshop. Its owners will soon have two brick-and-mortar locations at Oro Valley Marketplace, and on Broadway in Tucson.
“We're really, really excited to expand our impact and reach more people,” Lizzy Jeffrey-Franco said.
The pair opened their first brick-and-mortar location in Oro Valley in 2023, at and it quickly became a beloved fixture in the Oro Valley community, offering new books, delicious beverages at its in-store cafe, and an open, social environment for readers.
“Right now, we host a few dozen events each month — free book clubs that are open to the public. We do literary open mics, and we host ticketed author events,” Jeffrey-Franco said. “We're just a community hub for readers and lovers of coffee to kind of get together and find community in one another.”
The expansion to a second location in midtown Tucson was announced on the Stacks Book Club Instagram in late August, to the excitement of many Tucson-based patrons. Jeffrey-Franco said the owners have been considering adding another property for well over a year.
Co-owner Crispin Jeffery-Franco stocks some last-minute arrivals at Stacks Book Club, 1880 E. Tangerine Road,ahead of the grand opening.
“The community support has been absolutely incredible and essential in us kind of realizing this dream of the second larger location in midtown,” Jeffrey-Franco said. “I don't think in our wildest dreams we could have anticipated how much support from the community we'd receive.”
Matt Stewart has worked at Stacks since it opened, and said the response to the announcement has been extremely positive.
“We have a lot of customers now who live closer to that side of town, but they still make the drive up here, so they're going to be really happy to have a closer spot,” Stewart said. “For instance, when we were at the Tucson Festival of Books, there were loads of people saying, ‘I'd love to check you guys out, but you're just so far out of my normal neck of the woods.’”
One of those dedicated Tucson readers is Hannah Hildreth, a long-time customer of Stacks.
“I started going to Stacks a little bit after they first opened. I remembered I saw on social media that they had a coffee shop and a bookstore, and I was like, ‘oh, this is really cool,’” Hildreth said. “I've gone to some of their book release events, and I think that's just why I keep going back. It's just the community they've built, and it's just such a fun space to be with people who like reading, and then they also have such a good menu.”
To Hildreth, the draw of Stacks is the warm, social atmosphere, and she said she tries to make the trek to Oro Valley as frequently as possible.
The comfortable sitting area for readers inside Stacks Book Club's Oro Valley location.
“It's just like a great spot to hang out,” Hildreth said. “I definitely try to go at least once or twice a month, but it is a 45-minute drive.”
The new Tucson location will be much more convenient, she said.
“I just feel like I'll probably go all the time,” she said. “But it might not be good for my wallet.”
Hildreth said she hopes the new location will attract a new audience to Stacks.
“I would definitely recommend people check out Stacks. I just think that Lizzy and Crispin have built such a beautiful business, and their entire team is so welcoming,” Hildreth said. “It’s the perfect spot to grab a quick drink and then catch up on your book, or even work on whatever project you have.”
The new bookstore will be taking overٳformer Austin’s Old Fashioned Ice Cream building, and Jeffrey-Franco said it is the perfect place for their new venture.
“There's just so much history there, and it's a spot that so many people have a personal connection to. So for us to go in there and revitalize the space that was built in 1959, and turn it into a neighborhood bookstore and coffee bar and bring it back to its prime of being a place where the community gathers— it's just perfect.”
According to Jeffrey-Franco, the new store will be very similar to the current location, with everything loyal customers know and love about Stacks.
Readers can enjoy coffee drinks at the Stacks Book Club cafe.
“The main thing is, it's bigger, so it's going to be all the same vibes, but we're turning up the volume. We're going to have many, many, many more books available in store, which is something we're really excited about,” she said.
The new, larger space is going to be a game changer for the business, she added.
“It's going to allow us, first of all, to just reach many, many more people— being in a more central location that's pretty easily accessible for anyone living across town,” Jeffrey-Franco said. “So we're hoping just to serve many more people that way, get many more people into reading and engage in this culture around reading.”
She also hopes it will help attract more big authors to Tucson.
“One of the things that I've been working really hard to do is put Tucson on the map as a destination for authors on their book tours,” Jeffrey-Franco said. “So we've been working really closely with our publishing partners to prove to them that Tucson is a completely separate market from Phoenix. It's highly engaged here, with a lot of readers.”
She said if everything goes smoothly, the target opening date for the new location is January 2026.