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In many New England towns, the local general store is a community hub and the only place around to buy food. But running a store means long hours and small margins. When older proprietors retire, stores often shut down. Mikaela LeFrak of Vermont Public says some small-town residents are managing to keep their general stores open by creating nonprofits and buying the stores themselves.
MIKAELA LEFRAK, BYLINE: It's a dark winter afternoon in Strafford, population 1,000. A warm light emanates from an old wooden building with a gas pump and mail collection box outside.
CHRISSY JAMIESON: Hi, sweet pea.
LEFRAK: This is Coburns' General Store. Chrissy Jamieson is working the checkout, chitchatting as customers buy hamburger meat, beer, cat food and cheese. Her parents, Sue and Melvin Coburn, have owned this store for 47 years. It's the definition of a one-stop shop. There's a post office and bank inside, a laundromat in the basement, a meat counter and dry goods galore. The Coburns are ready to retire. They put the store on the market a few years ago but didn't get any good offers. Here's Melvin, who's 80 years old.
MELVIN COBURN: You know, six days a week, it adds up after a while. But I tell people, you know, it doesn't seem like a job to me.
LEFRAK: To save the general store, a group of locals has set up a nonprofit community trust. Their plan is to buy the store and then lease it out to a store operator. Under this model, Coburns' has to be locally run. It can't be turned into apartments or sold to a chain. That's really important to Lauri Berkenkamp. She's on the board of the trust.
LAURI BERKENKAMP: Going to Coburns' is my social outlet. My kids are adults now, and they can come back and see people run into their teachers and people that they knew when they were kids. It's like our town's living room in a way.
LEFRAK: Teenagers often get their first job at the store, and second homeowners cross paths with dairy farmers. Sue Coburn says you need good people skills.
SUE COBURN: And we get all kinds. We get young, old farmers. It's high society. Yeah, so you got to be able to treat them all the same.
LEFRAK: The nonprofit needs about $1.8 million to buy the store and pay for repairs. The building is more than 100 years old. One of the first people to donate to the effort was Berkenkamp's son, Noah Kahan, the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter. He featured Melvin Coburn's voice in the song "The View Between Villages" on his hit album "Stick Season." This community-supported enterprise model, as it's called, has worked well for stores in other Vermont towns - Putney, Guilford, Shrewsbury...
BEN DOYLE: ...Albany, Elmore, East Calais.
LEFRAK: Ben Doyle is the head of the Preservation Trust of Vermont. He's helped multiple towns establish community trusts for their general stores. He says the model helps young, motivated proprietors get into the business without having to drop a ton of money upfront.
DOYLE: It's really, really tough to make a go of it in a general store in rural communities these days. There's a ton of deferred maintenance, and the margins are really, really small.
LEFRAK: And sometimes, running a store isn't what the operator envisioned. If they want out, the store will stay a store, and the trust will just lease it to another person. Despite the long hours and slim margins, Melvin Coburn says he loves this store. It's home. He can't really imagine life without it.
M COBURN: And I've even said I'd be willing to work for the new owner here if it was - position was available, they needed some help.
LEFRAK: So your vision of retirement involves getting a job working at Coburns' General Store?
M COBURN: Well, possibly, I guess. I don't know.
LEFRAK: The Strafford Community Trust is still fundraising and looking for a proprietor. In the meantime, Sue and Melvin Coburn will keep working. They've been here 47 years, after all. Melvin says they can work a little more.
For NPR news, I'm Mikaela LeFrak in Strafford, Vermont.
(SOUNDBITE OF NOAH KAHAN SONG, "STICK SEASON") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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