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What owner Richard Roberts is semi-seriously billing as "the world's largest bookstore" is coming to Christy Park this fall.

Book Country Clearinghouse, which wholesales paperbacks to retailers across the United States, is adding a retail outlet to its warehouse on Walnut Street.

The store will open in mid-October, says Roberts, Book Country's CEO.

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Under its previous ownership, Book Country had retail stores at the former Eastland Mall, the Brentwood-Whitehall Shopping Center, and elsewhere. All of them are now closed.

This is the first store to open since Roberts and his wife, Sandy, took over Book Country five years ago. The company, located in the former Potter-McCune Co. plant and warehouse, employs about 100 people.

"We've had so many people stopping by and asking if we're ever going to open a bookstore," Roberts says. "We've done a couple of warehouse sales, and they went phenomenally well."

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The store will occupy several of the former truck bays on the Walnut Street side of the 375,000-square-foot warehouse, he says.

"The street is very high traffic, and we figured it would be a great way to give back to the community," Roberts says.

He's calling it the "world's largest bookstore" because Book Country at any given time stocks 8 million to 10 million books, representing about 35,000 different titles.

"We're going to display a number of the hottest selling titles in the bookstore, but the really cool thing is we're going to have a computer hardwired into the warehouse, and they can search for other titles," Roberts says. "If we have it in the warehouse, we'll go back and get it."

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Actually, if someone wants a certain title, there's a pretty good chance that Book Country will have it.

The company, which wholesales books to everyone from discounters to flea markets, currently represents most of the nation's big publishing imprints, including Harper Collins, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Random House, Oxford University Press, and others.

Clients for Book Country include the Ollie's and Tuesday Morning chains.

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Although the old Book Country store at Eastland had a reputation for carrying books long past their shelf-life, the "new" Book Country doesn't handle old or out-of-date titles, Roberts says.

All of the books are either perennials --- classics or reference works --- or "front-list" best-selling titles. They get shipped to Book Country because they're soiled or damaged, or because they're being returned as overstocks.

"We've got a ton of kids books, great reference books from Oxford University Press, home improvement books from Taunton Press, we've got pretty much everything," he says. "We've got complete encyclopedia sets, world atlases from Oxford, we've got books from Watson-Guptill --- they're one of the leaders in art books --- and also from the same publisher, film-making books."

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Book Country's business continues to grow at a prodigious space. The basement of the Christy Park warehouse --- once used as a mushroom-growing facility by Pomco --- has been remodeled and is now used for breaking down shipments. Most of the roof has also been replaced.

According to published reports, Book Country is now the nation's third-largest distributor of remaindered books. "In a down economy, our business does very well," says Roberts, who is currently looking to expand his distribution overseas into Asia and Africa.

If the bookstore in the city takes off, Roberts hopes to add reading programs for kids and make connections to the local school systems.

"I doubt this would be the beginning of many stores," he says. "It would be tough to replicate this in another location ... but I think it will work out very well. We're very excited."

And it's worth noting that the Book Country warehouse is literally on the Youghiogheny River hiking-biking trail.

"We have lots of books on CDs," Roberts says, laughing. "Bring your bike and your Walkman."

The projected opening date is Oct. 15, he says.