Globe Staff / December 13, 2009
PUTNEY, Vt. - It wasn’t a kitschy tourist spot, or a boutique stocked with artisanal cheeses. The Putney General Store was a workhorse, a 215-year-old dowager in this riverfront town, with dependably dusty floor boards, walls obscured by drawers of Phillips screws and sacks of flour, and a lunch counter rounded out each morning with old-timers who called themselves the Viagra Club.
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But big box stores had opened across the highway and when a fire ripped through the ceiling in May 2008, the owner decided he could not afford to reopen. The store sat shuttered, a waterlogged hull, until townspeople decided it was too small to fail.
Yes, it was just a store. But it was the bedrock of Main Street. If no angel investor was going to rescue it, they would, by pooling their money - much as they had, a few months earlier, moved to revive the town’s defunct bookstore.
“These are the hearts of our town,’’ said Tim Cowles, a landscape artist who recently wrote a $1,000 check for the Save the Putney General Store fund. “There has to be a conscious effort to save them.’’
As icons of New England merchandising disappear, towns across the region are mounting efforts to subsidize them, and in some cases, recreate them. In Greenfield, Mass., when a department store left town, residents purchased shares to help fund the start-up of a new store. In Cundy’s Harbor, Maine, residents spearheaded a 500-donor effort to buy a working wharf and village store that they feared could become a private residence. In Hardwick, Vt., 50 residents ponied up $10,000 to start a restaurant after years of going without one.
“It’s about a community understanding that there are certain businesses that are crucial to the success of their community,’’ said Paul Bruhn, executive director of the Preservation Trust of Vermont, a group that has aided a host of so-called “community-supported enterprises.’’
Bruhn and others say the shoring-up is necessary as the Internet and megachains have leeched business from local outfits. The challenge was compounded during the years of real estate frenzy as wealthy outsiders paid high prices and then quickly unloaded businesses after discovering that the profit margins could be slim and the hours long. The frequent turnover saddled businesses with high debt burdens that a single owner could not carry.
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http://www.boston.com/news/local/vermont/articles/2009/12/13/new_englanders_pool_resources_to_save_small_town_icons/