Retailer Barnes & Noble Inc. has signed a lease for a store in the Polaris Fashion Place mall, which is scheduled to open this fall after the merchant closes a nearby store. The New York-based retailer said the 33,000-square-foot store is scheduled to open in October, a day after it closes a 23,000-square-foot store just west of the mall. “Our new location at the Polaris Fashion Place mall will allow us to bring our most up-to-date, exciting and expanded offering to the trade area,” Anne Griffey, Barnes & Noble real estate director, wrote in an e-mail response the questions from Columbus Business First. The company didn’t comment on employment-related details. The retailer runs 20 stores in the state operating under its flagship and B. Dalton Booksellers nameplates. Six of those stores are in Central Ohio. Barnes & Noble (NYSE:BKS), the nation’s top book retailer, operates 798 stores. The company recorded a profit of $135.8 million on $5.41 billion in sales last year.