Community Retail
Like many communities, our small city lost its last downtown general store when FW Woolworth went under in 1997. So buying dry-goods basics like socks and underwear now means yet another [car] trip to the strip center, or perhaps hoping goods ordered online will look good / fit well when they arrive.
Conventional wisdom is that smaller stores like Woolworths were victims of changing trends in retail (read: Target and Walmart). But in truth Woolworth stores, like many older businesses, were shabby, understocked and dated, making Target seem like a breath of fresh air. Arguably, it was bad merchandising as much as the rise of big boxes that killed Woolworths and other small department stores. And while the lunch counter was never very good, it was at least an amusing throwback.
So it is encouraging to see the residents of Saranac Lake, NY take matters into their own hands by opening a community general store. As a New York Times article notes, the store is not a co-op, nor is it the product of philanthropy or subsidies: it is an investor-owned commercial enterprise, started by community members to fill a gaping hole in the local retail mix. Community-owned stores like this are fairly common in Europe, but rarely seen in the US outside small towns in the sparsely-settled West.
The goal for the store is not to make a profit (although that would be a bonus), but to serve the community. As the Times notes:
The Saranac Lake Community Store and others like it reflect a growing shift among some communities to lessen their dependence on global businesses and invest their resources in homegrown enterprises that contribute to the welfare of the community. These efforts flow from studies showing that, dollar for dollar, locally owned companies contribute more to local economies than corporate chains. That is because more money stays local rather than leaking out to a distant headquarters.
The Saranac Lake store suggests an interesting model for creating more neighborhood-scale retail. Now, if it only could include a lunch counter…