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The Saranac Lake
Community Store is continuing to push ahead in its fundraising
efforts, battling a struggling economy with a series of new events.
Melinda Little, President of the
Community Store’s Interim Board of Directors, says the organization
eased-off of its fundraising in March and will continue to do so
throughout most of April. But the campaign will begin gearing up
again in May, she said.
“We’ve kind of laid a little bit
low over the last month, in all honesty, but we’re about to start a
new, what we’re calling a ‘get-r-done’ campaign,” Little said. “And
we’ll be holding a series of events starting with an open house on
Saturday, May 9 at the library here in Saranac Lake.”
In addition to the open house,
Little said the Community Store will hold a naming contest.
“It’s an effort to get people
involved in the process of opening the store,” she said. “It will
probably start out as ‘The Community Store,’ but eventually we’d
like to give it a name of its own.”
Like any young business in the
current economy, the Community Store has run into fundraising
difficulties as it inches closer to its goal of collecting $500,000
in start-up capital. Little says the group continues to seek
investors, but some people have said no, citing a lack of
discretionary income.
“I guess there are
more choices facing everybody now,” Little said. “It’s not a
question of making an investment versus buying something else, it’s
a question of making an investment or saving my money because I’m
worried about losing my job.”
Currently, the store
has raised just over $343,000 of the approximately $500,000 needed
to get the ball rolling. Because the organization’s board of
directors is relatively small, Little says they have not pursued
federal or state grant money.
“It’s also more
difficult for a for-profit, private enterprise to lockdown those
kinds of funds, which are usually reserved for non-governmental and
nonprofit organizations,” Little added.
The community store
has yet to secure a location but has been named as a possible tenant
of a new mixed-use structure HES Ventures is planning across from
the Union Depot.
Those plans recently
took a step forward when the Saranac Lake Village Board agreed to
continue negotiating terms of a proposed land-swap with HES
Ventures.
HES wants to move its
fuel storage tanks to the Van Buren property and tear down several
old warehouse structures to make room for the new building, which
would have commercial space on the first floor and apartments on the
second floor.
-Chris Morris,
4-14-09
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