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