As Q&Q has been reporting all year, Toronto institution Pages Books & Magazines has been dangling by a thread at its current Queen Street West location, as the landlord has decided to raise the rent to unaffordable levels. Pages owner Marc Glassman has spent the last few months looking for a new location, but it appears that he has finally given up.

This morning, a press release went out from Glassman:

Pages books & magazines, in Toronto’s Queen West neighbourhood, will close its doors on August 31st. Sky rocketing rent at the city-owned property is behind the move. When we opened on the corner of Queen and John 30 years ago, it was where artists lived and worked, says proprietor Marc Glassman, who heads up the Queen West Business Improvement Association. Now our neighbours are CTV, The Gap, and Club Monaco.

Glassman has conducted an exhaustive two-year search for an alternative location, but nothing appropriate has appeared on the market.  I am open to suggestions, he says. But with the e-book revolution steaming ahead we need a space that accommodates more than just retail.

Pages specializes in literature, art, film, and photography, and is noted for its selection of Eastern Philosophy, the social sciences, and pop culture. It pioneered cultural theory and small press sections, and the store was an early supporter of ˜zines and graphic novels. A meeting place for intellectuals, journalists, filmmakers, and designers, Pages has always been more than a bookstore. Glassman was honoured with a Toronto Arts Award for literature in 2000. It acknowledged for me the store’s impact on the cultural life of the city, he says.

Look for further coverage of Pages’ closure on Q&Q Omni later today.