The Round House Cafe, with your help and the help of so many people here in my town, is staying in our town. This is a victory for community, the one that didn’t get away at a time when so many rural communities have been passed by and left behind and have lost their sense of identity and their gathering places.

Scott and Lisa Carrino were unsuccessful in their long efforts to buy their current building and stay in it, they could not reach an agreement with their landlord. In the next few months, they will move right next door, to a beautiful space owned by Hubbard Hall, the town’s old Opera House, now an arts and education center.

The new space was once Hubbard Hall’s much-loved gift shop, which was shut down last Fall. Not enough business.

The new space has room for a full-size kitchen, has tall ceilings and beautiful wooden shelves and fixtures. It’s a perfect cafe space.  The Round House can serve its own customers, but also tie into the classes and productions that occur regularly at Hubbard Hall.

The cafe can seat more people, hold more events, sell more baked goods or gifts. The rent will be much lower.

The gofundme campaign launched last year by Scott and Lisa Carrino was instrumental in saving the cafe, and they thank you and I thank you. The money will be used to renovate the space next door and renovate the kitchen and make sure the cafe meets and surpasses local fire codes.

You can see the update here.

The cafe has become a gathering point for many in the community.

Musicians gather on Fridays to play on pizza night, high school students sing and read their poems on Open Mike Night, artists get to hang their work on the cafe walls, and people can bring their laptops and work and have coffee there.  Industrious high school and college kids get jobs.

The rest of us have a place to meet and see one another and eat good and fresh food, including their increasingly famous homemade soups and pastries and muffins.

In many ways, the cafe has become the soul of the town, and Scott and Lisa have exhausted themselves working day and night seven days a week and figuring out how to keep their cafe going in our community. There are a few street people in our town, and when they come in for food or to be warm, they are never charged or turned away.

That is the meaning of a community cafe.

As the recent election revealed, rural America has been left behind by the new global economy, and by the economic boom affecting cities like New York, Boston, San Francisco, Denver, Houston and Washington. Chain and box and franchise stores – the Wal-Mart Effect – have wiped out many downtowns and shuttered countless small businesses. The industrial, agricultural, mill and factory jobs have left or gone overseas and many small family farms are going under.

Rural kids have to leave the farms for the cities, where they can find work.

In Washington, the politicians and economists have decided rural life and small farms are economically inefficient, there just aren’t enough people there. So we make deals with China, not Main Street.

The economists have abandoned the countryside.  There are no new roads and public works projects or infrastructure improvements or downtown improvement grants here and we rarely, if ever, see a politician from outside. No reporter ever comes her to do a story.

Many rural Main Streets all over America are anchored not by thriving businesses but by empty storefronts.

I think the prospects of the Round House buying their building began to fray when the landlord put up some “For Sale” signs right in the cafe windows right around the time he raised the rent. Many visitors and people in town thought the cafe was closing, others panicked at the thought. You might remember I took those signs down in a one-day protest, then returned them.

Lots of people, local and elsewhere, scolded me for that.

If the Round House had not found a new location, it might well have closed, the rent increase was substantial and their operating costs there were high.  To me, the putting up of the signs was an odd thing to do in the middle of a negotiation.

If the Round House had closed, Main Street would have suffered a serious blow, up to a dozen people would have lost their temporary and full-time jobs. Two important buildings on Main Street would have been vacant, the village would have lost some taxes. The town would have lost its cafe and gathering space. The more we see one another, the greater our sense of community.

The  landlord put up some new signs after the first ones vanished a second time (not at my hands) and for good. People here did not like them in the window. I thought they were damaging and short-sighted, people see “For Sale” signs and understandably assume the business is closing.

This week the landlord returned with an even bigger sign, one which appears to suggest he means to sell to someone who wants to put a restaurant in the space and compete with the Round House.  Hmm…That made me pause.

I guess this proves that I am not a business person and would not make a good realtor either.

The idea seems to be that if one sign upset local residents, undermined a business,  disrupts a negotiation, didn’t bring a single buyer  – for a restaurant or anything else – then why not bring in a sign that is three times the size and suggests putting a restaurant right next to a cafe  that just moved 10 feet away?

It’s clear that the sign is bigger than any other sign on Main Street, but we don’t get a huge amount of traffic in our town, and the building has been for sale for nine years. I had hair then.

I wonder how many farmers or Bennington professors or Bog diners or leaf peepers in October driving by will  see the new sign and pull over and call their bank and open a restaurant on the corner there, literally next to the Round House and a few feet away from the busy Cambridge Diner, which serves breakfast and lunch?

I suppose I wouldn’t make a good restaurant owner either, as I can’t imagine why any would-be restaurant owner would spend $250,000 to do that.  But then, I have no money to speak of. And I know nothing about the restaurant business either.

I guess the point is My Sign Is Bigger Than Yours. I suppose the next step may be a banner right across Main Street. I don’t think there is any danger of anyone pulling the new sign down. I don’t have a ladder that big.

I hope the building sells, it would be good for the town, and I wish the landlord every success.  It is his building to do with as he pleases.

Thanks so much for fighting for the idea of community. You did it.