S.D. residents finance town's only variety store

CLARK, S.D. -- This prairie town of 1,300 loves its football, and residents are just about split between the Minnesota Vikings and the Green Bay Packers, says Randy Gruenwald, a local banker. It's no surprise when the annual Potato Days Parade has entries representing both teams, he says.

The people of Clark aren't split, however, when it comes to financing the Clark Hometown Variety Store. They're rooting together for a business model that helped build the Green Bay Packers into a National Football League power as they attempt to make a go of a community-owned general store that opened in February.

In 1923, Green Bay townspeople paid $5 a share to be part-owners of the team. The franchise is still owned by the community, says Lee Remmel, 84, an ex-Green Bay Packers historian.

In similar fashion, more than 100 people in Clark have purchased $500 shares to finance the opening of the Clark Hometown Variety Store. The store will take the place of the Duckwall store, which was one of 20 underperforming stores parent company Duckwall-Alco Stores of Kansas closed in 2005.

"We had no place in town to buy a pair of shoelaces or buy socks or underwear or any of those things," says Greg Furness, a shareholder who runs the local funeral home. Residents, he says, had to make a 40-minute drive — sometimes in treacherous winter conditions — to Watertown every time they needed supplies.

Town residents coming together to open stores is "definitely a growing initiative," says Stacy Mitchell, a senior researcher at the Minneapolis-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance. "People feel a sense of ownership for the business, and that sense of ownership brings people into the store," she says.

Clark officials contacted national corporations when the Duckwall store closed. But the corporations "didn't want to risk bringing their store into a small community," Gruenwald says.

Some stockholders purchased multiple shares and ultimately raised about $100,000, Furness says. Then townspeople volunteered their time to refurbish the store.