A Town in New York Creates Its Own Department Store – NYTimes.com

When the local department store people in Saranac Lake had to drive 50 miles to buy bed linens and underware. Then Wal-Mart came knocking and people decided they didn’t want this giant camped out in the little town.

…when Wal-Mart Stores came knocking, some here welcomed it. Others felt that the company’s plan to build a 120,000-square-foot supercenter would overwhelm their village, with its year-round population of 5,000, and put local merchants out of business.

It’s a situation familiar to many communities these days. But rather than accept their fate, residents of Saranac Lake did something unusual: they decided to raise capital to open their own department store. Shares in the store, priced at $100 each, were marketed to local residents as a way to “take control of our future and help our community,” said Melinda Little, a Saranac Lake resident who has been involved in the effort from the start. “The idea was, this is an investment in the community as well as the store.”

via A Town in New York Creates Its Own Department Store – NYTimes.com.