Maureen Gilmore grins behind the counter of The Village Mercantile in Saranac Lake. “The Merc” is the only community-owned department store in the state. But it faces potential dissolution, with a board meeting about its future on Feb. 25. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

SARANAC LAKE — The Village Mercantile — the only community-owned department store in the state and one of the few remaining in the country — is at risk of closing, as it’s been struggling financially since it opened in 2011.

The store’s board of directors is holding a meeting that will be open to the public on Feb. 25 in the Cantwell Room in the basement of the Saranac Lake Free Library at 5 p.m.

Mercantile founding board member and President Melinda Little said they’ll discuss the store’s future, see if there’s enough community energy to keep it going and possibly bring in new board members. But the potential to dissolve the store is on the table.

A community-owned department store is incredibly rare. Little said it might be the only one in the country still functioning.

“Retail is hard,” Little said.

During the coronavirus pandemic, they did “all they could do to stay alive.”

Retail has changed a lot since the store opened almost 15 years ago, Little said.

The Mercantile has been adjusting through the years, adding an online store and rebranding from The Community Store to The Village Mercantile in 2018.

“It has been struggling for quite a while,” Little said. “Profitability had eluded us from the beginning.”

Some years have gotten close, but Little said they’ve never turned a profit and the current model is not sustainable.

She brought up the potential of dissolving the store in a letter to stakeholders about the upcoming meeting on Monday.

“(We will) invite nominations in the event a new slate of board members wishes to take over the reins of the store and, perhaps, find a way to reinvent the model so it works,” Little wrote. “However, the current board will also be prepared to make a motion to move towards the dissolution of the store.”

She said the meeting is a “wake-up call” and a chance for the board to see if it’s worth it to the community for a new group of leaders to keep it running. Little said they’ll need to find solutions to the profitability problems they have.

Just recently, Little said two people told her they found ironing boards here that they couldn’t find anywhere else in the region. This is really cool, she said, but that sort of inventory does not turn over quickly.

“We’ve tried to be all things to a lot of people, and that’s hard,” Little said.

She’s still optimistic that the community can make the model work. But she said the board is “burned out.”

They’re looking to see if new board members — particularly young people — want to try to reinvent the Mercantile. Little said this would be a big time commitment. There’s not going to be a quick fix, she said.

Little said they’ve worked to keep expenses down. She said a very high percentage of people who walk through the door buy something before they head out. But the store hasn’t had the money to put into marketing in recent years.

The store took a huge effort to start, and did a crowdfunding effort in 2018 to raise debt capital.

When the Ames department store closed due to bankruptcy in 2002, it left a major hole in the local retail scene. People had to travel to Plattsburgh, Malone or Potsdam to buy everyday essentials like underwear, children’s shoes, cooking utensils or craft supplies.

For a number of years, Walmart was in talks to open up a supercenter here, at the end of town where McDonald’s, Aldi and the village sand pit are.

This was controversial, with fierce support and fierce opposition to the large company coming into town. The plan was eventually scrapped.

As consolation, a group of locals started up The Community Store, inspired by and modeled after the community-owned Powell Mercantile in Wyoming. The Powell Mercantile opened in 2001 and closed in 2016.

In 2018, The Community Store rebranded as The Village Mercantile.

It’s a corporation with several hundred shareholders, run by a volunteer board of directors. Little said no one person owns more than a 3% share of the company. She said 750 people bought shares at $100 each to raise the $540,000 needed to open. The store was the first community-owned department store in the state.

The New York Times wrote about the opening and called it “the retail equivalent of the Green Bay Packers.” Ironically, the last time the Green and Gold won the Super Bowl was in February 2011, eight months before The Community Store opened.

On Tuesday, a woman was in the Mercantile buying a pan to bake herself a birthday cake — carrot cake, using her friend’s contest-winning recipe.

Maureen Gilmore was behind the counter. She said they sell a lot of things like that — daily essentials that are needed, but not sold for miles around. Recently, hats, gloves, snowpants and boots have been hot items.

On top of clothing, kitchen supplies and lots of yarn, she said the store also does consignment and sells syrup, jewelry, art, books and candles made by local creators.

Little hopes that if they can remind people of the Mercantile’s uniqueness of origin and purpose, it might rally the community around the store.