3c hapter - Index of

116 Locavesting
part of this,’” Merc general manager Paul Ramos told a regional
newspaper. 9
It feels so good that dozens of western towns that have been
abandoned by their anchor stores have followed suit.
Saranac Lake will be among the fi rst such examples on the
more densely populated and retail- served east coast. When town
organizers invited a representative from the Powell Mercantile to
come talk at a June 2006 town hall meeting, about 200 residents
turned up. “People were excited,” says Melinda Little, president of
the interim board of directors for Saranac Lake Community Store.
And they were enthusiastic about investing, she says. Little, who runs
a business camp for girls called Camp Startup as her day job, put
together a business plan. As fate would have it, a securities lawyer
who grew up in the area, Charles Noth, had just moved back to
town and agreed to work on the project pro bono. He put together
a prospectus and fi led it with New York state authorities, allowing
the group to raise money from state residents. Noth, the brother of
actor Chris Noth (aka Mr. Big in Sex in the City), is also an investor.
The prospectus can also be downloaded by potential investors from
the group’s web site, www. community- store.org.
In an effort to make participation broadly accessible, the
organizers kept the price of shares at $100. They also instituted an
investment ceiling of $10,000 so that no one person could amass
a controlling interest (but also making fundraising more diffi -
cult). Shares are open to any New York state resident, but, as Little
says, “our investors will be our main customers.”
Given the recession, it has taken much longer than hoped to
raise the $500,000 needed to open the store. The deadline has been
extended several times, but in early 2011, after a fi nal fundraising
push, the organization reached its goal. Lease negotiations were
underway for a 5,000-square foot former restaurant space, and bids
were being solicited from local contractors to renovate it. The organizers
had begun interviewing store managers, and were drawing
up inventory lists, in preparation for an anticipated July opening
For investors, there is no guarantee of a return, Little says.
And initially, any profi ts will be plowed back into the running of
the store. There is also no secondary market to sell shares, so the