{"id":5894,"date":"2026-04-29T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.imaginarygardens.org\/?p=5894"},"modified":"2026-04-28T15:39:02","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T19:39:02","slug":"knoxville-says-goodbye-to-mckays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.imaginarygardens.org\/index.php\/2026\/04\/29\/knoxville-says-goodbye-to-mckays\/","title":{"rendered":"Knoxville Says Goodbye to McKay’s"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
By David Lavrinovich, Alumni Editor and Olyver LaGabed, Staff Writer
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A longstanding pillar of Knoxville, Tennessee, McKay\u2019s Used Bookstore, has announced that it will be closing. After 40 years of service, its last day of operation will be on Sunday, May 3, 2026. This follows the Knoxville store\u2019s employees unionizing in November 2022 and striking for fair wages and better working conditions. There\u2019s no place quite like McKay\u2019s in East Tennessee, aside from its locations in other cities, which is what makes their closure all the more impactful, especially to Pellissippi State Community College students. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Economics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Stock Trading | Pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Despite having locations in multiple cities, McKay\u2019s Knoxville location uniquely benefited the surrounding community. Independent bookstores give a greater boost to local economies, and according to Straight Arrow News, they have a 405% greater local impact than larger corporations offering the same services. McKay\u2019s also offered a place for individuals to sell or donate their pre-loved belongings rather than adding them to landfills. Now that Knoxville\u2019s local buy-and-sell shop is out of order, residents are left without a place to buy necessary resources at reasonable prices, and <\/em>without a place to sell items they\u2019d otherwise waste. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another result of McKay\u2019s shutting down is the loss of a substantial number of jobs. More than 50 employees will be put out of work by the store’s abrupt closing. Many employees of McKay\u2019s had been there for several years, and the store’s abrupt closure is something that, frankly, not even residents <\/em>saw coming. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This business decision is anything but simple; it will reverberate across the Knoxville economy and have a lasting cost. That\u2019s not only the aftermath of McKay\u2019s shutting down, though. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Education<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Bookstores are crucial for encouraging literacy amongst all ages, but especially children and students. Without McKay\u2019s, many are losing an affordable selection of a variety of books. McKay\u2019s housed several genres of fiction, as well as cookbooks, college textbooks, and books for learning English as a second language. Not to mention that tools like calculators, rulers, flashcards, and more were much more affordable at McKay\u2019s. These are just a few examples of the many different types of learning materials the shop had available for purchase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The loss of such a valuable resource does not bode well for the literacy crisis in the U.S. and particularly for the state of Tennessee, which ranks in 39th place for literacy rates across the country in a study done by the Institute of Education Sciences. This particularly impacts students who have to shop for their classes on top of paying tuition fees. Oftentimes, textbooks are easily over a hundred dollars, so many students rely on stores like McKay\u2019s to sell easy-to-access textbooks for a lower price.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The closing of McKay\u2019s certainly won\u2019t help schooling and can be expected to have an aftermath on the state of education in Knoxville, as people inside and outside of school lose the easy access to books and media that McKay\u2019s supplies. Many students may be led to purchase overly expensive books, get scammed online from attempted piracy of necessary materials, and may even fail specific classes simply due to a lack of resources. Stores like McKay\u2019s aren\u2019t just cool, retro archives where people sell physical media they don\u2019t want anymore. Thrift stores like McKay\u2019s often act as an incredibly necessary resource for students who are unable to fund their education at the unfair rate that many are being asked to do so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third Places<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Photo of Cafe Interior | Pexels<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, the Knoxville community will be harmed by losing a significant third place, somewhere people can go outside of home, school, and work. The closure of McKay\u2019s will lead to people all over Knoxville spending more money, discovering less media, and feeling more alienated <\/em>as residents lose a pivotal third place within the city, one of the few <\/em>third places that still exist in the city at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The disappearances of third places are happening on a national scale, with the amount of time Americans spend with friends dropping by 37% between 2014 and 2019, according to Business Insider. This has drastic effects on social and mental health, and is something that many Knoxvillians are expecting following this closure. The loss of a third place like McKay\u2019s means that many people in Knoxville will have to find other substitutes or be left lacking in community.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Physical Media<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Pellissippi State | Taylor Gash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Patrons of the used bookstore are now left wondering where they can buy, sell, and trade their gently loved items. McKay\u2019s was unlike other businesses, which usually cater to one niche, as it not only offered books, but also comics, CDs, DVDs, vinyl records, video games, toys, and more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With its closure, Knoxvillians will have a much harder time obtaining and owning physical media in an age where digital copies and subscription services are becoming the norm. This will lead to more consumption, more waste, and more tossing of items that never needed to be thrown out to begin with. Of course, many thrift stores in the area do act as a place for people to house their old items, however many of the popular ones in East Tennessee (specifically Karm Thrift Stores) wind up compartmentalizing and tossing items that don\u2019t sell rather than donating to organizations in need. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This ultimately leads to more waste, especially as thrifting becomes less and less accessible to individuals in need due to fast fashion trends and the over-consumption of necessary goods. Ultimately, in the Knoxville area and East Tennessee region in general, the closure of McKay\u2019s poses a truly detrimental question: why bother donating or thrifting when everything gets wasted in the end, when everything is just going to get more expensive? Is it even worth it to put the effort in anymore?<\/em> While Knoxville still has options like popular thrift stores such as Goodwill, Karm, and others, the shutdown of McKay\u2019s is still a huge detriment to the community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pollution Concept | IStock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Big Picture <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the day, McKay\u2019s was more than a business. McKay\u2019s was a staple in Knoxville\u2019s community, a place where individuals could go to teach themselves and each other about literature, music, and art. It was a form of income for some, a building that held generations of invaluable media to most, and to everyone, a centerpiece of Knoxville\u2019s community. Now that it\u2019s closing, Knoxville will miss out on a lot of benefits that the shop provided, and cannot be replaced by anything else. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are other places in Knoxville to thrift and pick up old media, but none are as accessible and widespread in their variety of media as McKay\u2019s. With the closure of McKay\u2019s, many students will not be able to find textbooks at affordable prices, many pieces of physical media will be lost to landfills and time, and the thrifting community in Knoxville loses its centerpiece. With only a few days until McKay\u2019s closes down, Knoxville is already grieving and preparing to say its farewells to the beloved store. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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