In 1996, Zook and Gannett bought an adjoining building—a former flower shop—to further expand BookCourt into, and in 2008, they built a section which tripled the bookstore's total footprint.
[1] Several decades later, by 2009, Emma Straub began working at BookCourt after having first set up an event there for a novella she had published called Fly-Over State.
Over time, Straub witnessed various notable writers come in to shop and do events, including Jennifer Egan, Jonathan Franzen, and Don DeLillo.
[4] On opening day, several notable writers appeared, including Phil Klay, Jazmine Hughes, and Kyle Lucia Wu.
Later, when the Brooklyn Heights Association told Straub and her husband that there was local interest in a bookstore on Montague Street to help revitalize the area amid vacancies and other problems, the two found themselves open to the idea, as it was a much familiar neighborhood to them and already featured venues they used for book events.