3c hapter - Index of

110 Locavesting
A Rich Community
A similar scenario unfolded in Fort Greene, a vibrant neighborhood
of stately old brownstones that is home to the Brooklyn Academy of
Music (BAM), a popular weekend market known as the Brooklyn
Flea, and a ton of bibliophiles. Many restaurants and cafes have
popped up in the past several years, but one of the amenities the
neighborhood was sorely lacking was a good local bookstore. When
the Fort Greene Association surveyed residents about what type of
retail options they would like to see, the number one answer, with
75 percent of responses, was a bookstore. So it was kismet when the
neighborhood association discovered that Jessica Stockton- Bagnulo
and Rebecca Fitting, two young book- obsessed women, were hoping
to do just that. Three hundred people showed up for a party
thrown by the association at BAM to welcome them, before they
even had secured a location or fi nancing. The bookstore plans,
alas, were set back after the failure of Lehman Brothers in the fall
of 2008, which precipitated a deep a credit freeze. Suddenly, the
prospects for securing a loan seemed dim.
Even before the fi nancial crisis, Stockton- Bagnulo knew it
wouldn’t be easy. In a July 2008 entry on her blog chronicling the
efforts to open the bookstore, she wrote:
Most of the folks I know who have opened up independent
bookstores in the last 10 years or so have had one of two
things:
1) a mortgage
2) a well- off relative or friend.
These are traditional and time- honored means of securing
capital for an independent business, especially one as
high- risk as a bookstore (it also works with restaurants, bars,
and other retail businesses).
I have neither of those things.
Facing up to the fact that there would be no “magical millionaire”
riding in to save her, Stockton- Bagnulo came to appreciate