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Borders had a good plan for a superstore... "set up in college towns that don't have a bookstore." Then they decided they could expand from that, a lot, and ultimately fell apart. (That's not the only reason, but losing sight of their core demographic was part of it.)
BN gets to discover that the superstore system can't compete with the bigger superstore that is Amazon. What walk-in stores need is books at hand that appeal to the local crowd--indie stores can do that; national ones can't unless the local managers are allowed to choose what to stock. They do get to skew the stock a little bit, but mostly, they're pulling from the same collections; they can't drastically rearrange the store to deal with the local crowd; instead, they try hard to appeal to whatever locals like their normal supply range.
The Nook space wouldn't be bad if they were staffed by people who understood ebooks instead of salespeople told to sell as many tablets as possible. But the toys, souvenirs, book-accessories, gift packaging... they've obviously decided they're not catering to readers; they're catering to people who buy stuff for readers. That's a very different market, and it can't sustain a bookstore in the long run.
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