Store Will Symbolize Community Pride
Adirondack Daily Enterprise
Posted July 17, 2007

After reading Gail Meyer’s commentary in the May 30th ADE, I felt compelled to write this commentary of my own. It was indeed a sad day when Meyer’s closed its doors. It was the end of an era for downtown Saranac Lake. Our downtown is in transition, as are many other small downtowns across the country.

In the middle of the last century, downtowns such as ours thrived, with everything a resident would want or need. Right here in Saranac Lake I’ve been told of Newbury’s, Woolworth’s, Altman’s and Everett’s, Leonard’s, Wilson’s and Stephen’s, Endicott Johnson and Finnegan’s Shoes, Kennedy’s Ladies wear and The National Army Store (with three floors). It was also during this time that advertising was at its peak on the American landscape; television, corporate sponsorships, billboards, magazines, radio, the hay day of American consumption was just beginning. American manufacturing was flourishing.

During the seventies, malls and strip malls were springing up across America, including here in the North Country. Local people were drawn from their downtowns to shop in the malls and big box stores that offered less expensive goods. In the 1980s, catalog companies came to the marketplace and in the nineties Internet shopping came into popularity, leveling yet another blow to downtown retailers. Downtown stores couldn’t compete and began to close. For American Factory owners, paying a living wage to workers and satisfying the consumer’s demand for cheap things were incompatible. The jobs went overseas. Many factories closed.

Something had happened to the American psyche. Consumers decided that not only did they “need” all the things the advertisers told them they couldn’t live without, they also decided that they wanted them all as cheaply as they could get them. There was never any consideration for the quality or durability of the items; there was no consideration for the origins of the product: Were workers that made the items being paid fairly? Were the materials being used to make the item destroying the environment? Did it come from a country where human rights were violated? Did we care that Americans were losing their jobs so we could have cheaper things? Did we care that our neighbors’ downtown shop was closing?

The answer for a long time was no. We didn’t care. We wanted it cheap; we didn’t want to think about how it got here, how it was made or who made it. Having it cheap was all that mattered. The cost of that cheapness is now more expensive than we ever imagined. We have lost our thriving downtowns and we have shut down American manufacturing and made countries that have little regard for human rights rich. We have added green house gases to the environment at levels unrivalled by any country on the planet. We have taken the wrong path. We have cared little for the consequences of our actions in the name of accumulating more cheap stuff, along with more sky rocketing debt and more harm to our environment and ourselves. The landfills and garbage barges are full of the disposable, cheap, non-degradable stuff that we have consumed and trashed. The truth is that purchasing something that is well made, from a local retailer, that costs a little more, will outlast by many lives a similar, more cheaply made item that was bought at a big box store. So in the end, the consumer loses on every level.

When we leave our small village and venture out into other parts of the state and across the country, it is hard to tell one town from another. The same big box stores and the same chain stores line the strips. They all look the same. If you were dropped down into anyone of those towns, there would be no way to distinguish one from the other. While we were sleeping, American towns have become homogenized. There is no uniqueness. There is no heart. In fact many of those communities regret that they let the strip malls begin, because like a cancer, they destroyed the life of the community and spread to overtake their individuality. They had no idea that they would lose their identity in the name of consumption. For them there is no turning back.

But now I see the pendulum swinging. Americans are coming out of a long, numb sleep. As I write this, there is a transformation taking place in small towns. We are becoming aware of the value of our downtowns and how a small thing like shopping locally has a huge impact on our lives and our planet. In Saranac Lake, we understand how lucky we are to live in a beautiful, proud, special community that still very much has a heart. The downtown stores and the shop owners that own them have helped raise our children with donations to every school event. They buy advertising in programs for local events; they support our local print shop and newspaper. The list is long. We are all connected. It’s this web of support that makes Saranac Lake such an amazing place to live.

The Community Store is about to take root here in Saranac Lake and will bring retail shopping to the tri-lakes and help the local economy. Like the Merc in Powell Wyoming, we are forging the path for other small towns all over the country that are looking into the community owned department store option to meet their retail shopping needs without destroying their town. When the Community Store comes it will be a symbol of our resourcefulness and our commitment to our downtown and shopping locally. We can be proud that we have taken the right path. Local matters.
 
Gail Brill

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