Saranac Lake's Community Store moves closer to reality

By KIM SMITH DEDAM
Staff Writer
January 25, 2009

SARANAC LAKE — Walls in the Community Store will be painted harvest colors, in warm yellow and gold hues. Its departments will be styled like a mercantile shop, pulled from early village history.

Baskets, barrels and shelves will be stocked with all kinds of sundry items: sewing notions, crafts supplies, shoes, boots, clothing, shower curtains, mattress pads, pillows and Red Heart yarn.

A corner of the store will have coffee and tea, with tables for people to stop and visit.

A bulletin board will relay upcoming events around the community, and a special space will be kept available for local non-profit groups selling their wares or raffle tickets.

SHARES SOLD
The vision to build the Community Store at $100 per share is approaching a tipping point. The last rounds of shares will be sweetest to sell, before the opportunity for investment ends.

Raising funds at an average clip of $18,400 per month, Community Store board members Melinda Little and Gail Brill are in the home stretch to hit the goal of $500,000, a hard and fast number filed in the business plan with the Attorney General's Office.

The "community" of the Community Store defines both who is building it and who it serves.

Funded entirely by stock sold to the public at $100 a share, the store will be open to everyone, whether they own stock or not.

OLD-TIME LOOK
With the chill of winter frosting the window panes of their office near the Saranac Lake Train Depot, the women are visibly jazzed about the coming months, the home stretch and selling the last shares.

"I see the walls being warm colors," Little said, nodding. "Friendly warm and welcoming — not institutional at all, but inviting in warm, harvest yellow kinds of colors."

"We envision it as looking a lot like an old-time mercantile," Brill said, "with a welcome person, a shareholder who helps people find things like a shopkeeper."

Restrooms would be located near a lounge area, with comfortable seating.

The layout will be sensitive to older folks who would be shopping there, Brill added.

SITE SOUGHT
The two women have scoped out a few places in and around the village that would serve nicely as the store's first site for a few inaugural years.

But community development funding is targeted to build a finished site across from the train station.

The unique concept of Community Store is captured neatly in the logo Brill designed and painted in a long strip of fabric that hangs in their office.

A folk-art rendition of storefronts is lined up in a row, and centered squarely among them sits the Community Store, an anchor.

RESPONSIVE
There will be a way to order bigger items or request the company carry stock items in an evolving buyer's plan.

"We will remain very responsive to what the community wants," Little said.

Doing so, Brill explained, will strengthen the local economy and ensure the store's success.

With more than $333,000 invested so far, the project is ramping up for a quickened pace for the next $100,000.

Brill and Little said that once they hit the target half-million, they will secure a location and start to look for staff in earnest.

"We will hire a manager and a buyer," Little said. The jobs will come with health insurance and other employment benefits.

Then shareholders will elect a standing board of directors, and storekeepers will start buying inventory.

"There will probably be a couple parties thrown in there," Brill said, with a laugh.

Meantime, fundraising continues with a matching promise of $5,000 on the table.

"This is an investment," Brill said, "an investment that could, in fact, have a return."

If all goes as planned, the harvest-colored walls will be painted in time for the store to open around mid-September.

E-mail Kim Smith Dedam at: kdedam@pressrepublican.com
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