The Well, Saugerties’ iconic volunteer-run community thrift store, will celebrate its 50th year in 2025. But there’s no telling where they’ll be when that momentous anniversary occurs. After more than two decades at 80-84 Partition Street in the heart of the village, a rent increase may force them to find a new home.
Jane Bird is the chairperson of The Well Advisory Board, a group of volunteers who help keep the thrift store afloat, and keep its longtime mission of serving the community alive. Bird chatted with Hudson Valley One a week after a viral social media post detailed their dilemma.
“Our mission is to help people help themselves,” said Bird. “People come in and their comments are things like they come shopping at our store because they can’t afford Goodwill or the Salvation Army. Those stores are too expensive, so they come to us.”
The Well, sponsored by the Saugerties Area Council of Churches, currently has two storefronts side-by-side: One has donated items for sale, and in the other everything is free. The prices in the former are low, but also negotiable.
“If they can’t afford our prices, which are like $2 for a pair of pants, $2 for a shirt, then we basically tell them, ‘Oh, okay, that’s fine, just take it’” Bird said. “We do charge more for more upscale items, for jewelry and maybe brand-new designer clothes. But the bulk of our business is for families, and anybody can shop here.”
In a Thursday, June 13 Facebook post, The Well explained that their building had recently been sold, and the new owner offered them options should they choose to stay: Remain in their current setup on a three-year lease with their new rent starting at $3,000 per month, increasing by five percent each year; or keep one unit — the Well’s choice — and sign a three-year lease at $1,700 per month with the same five percent annual increase. The Well currently pays $1,477 per month plus utilities for both spaces.
“Unfortunately, if we have to cut back, the storefront we’d lose is the free store,” Bird said.
The Well pays around $50 for weekly cleaning, but everyone else involved with the day-to-day operations works as a volunteer. Other than electricity, insurance and rent, the Well has very little overhead.
“Any money we make on top of that, we then give it back to the community,” Bird said. “If somebody’s in need or some organization needs something, we try to help. We support the Boys and Girls Club. We’ve paid for people’s car repairs because they couldn’t get to work.”
Bird said because of The Well’s mission and the realities facing much of their clientele, simply raising prices to compensate for a rent increase wouldn’t necessarily make a difference.
“I don’t know how far raising the prices would go,” Bird said. “A lot of the people that come into our store, they have like $10 to spend. And if they can get five things at $2 apiece, that’s what they’ll get. But they can only get two things at $5 apiece, they’re only going to get two things, because they only have $10. Raising our prices isn’t necessarily going to raise our sales. And really, what that does is it reduces the amount of clothing that they can buy for their kids to go back to school in the fall. It could prohibit them from getting a $1 winter coat for one of their kids.”
Bird said the announcement on Facebook has led to many people sharing what the Well has meant to them over the years.
“So many people are saying, ‘I was homeless or living in my car, and you helped me,’” Bird said. “We’ve had a number of people come into the store and say, “When I was a little kid my mom was a single mom, and she bought all of our school clothes here. We wouldn’t have had clothes to go back to school if this store wasn’t here.’ There’s a lot of need in the community, and this is a way for people to keep their dignity because they’re coming in and they’re shopping, and they’re actually purchasing stuff. They’re not paying a lot, but they are coming in and they’re shopping, and their kids see them shopping.”
Bird said she could see the point of view of the new owners of the building in which the Well operates.
“They’re asking $3,000, which I have no problem with understanding that that probably is the current market rate for our space,” she said. “I don’t think they’re overcharging us by any stretch of the imagination. But that’s $36,000 a year, and we don’t take that much in as far as gross receipts go. And that’s before the insurance and the electric bill and all that. But from their perspective, we have two storefronts and we’re only paying for one, so we need to start paying for the other. They’re looking at it in that we’ve had a free ride on the one storefront, and that’s not going to happen anymore.”
And so The Well Advisory Board is wrestling with some choices. Staying put in both storefronts and operating as always seems unlikely, though not yet impossible.
“We could really use a grant, or for some larger organization to set up a trust fund for us to help pay part of the rent every month,” Bird said. “But it isn’t rental assistance for a couple of months and then it goes away. It’s $1,500 a month for the next foreseeable future.”
Another option is to consolidate The Well into a single storefront in their same location.
“Our landlord has offered us the opportunity to use the basement of the building as storage, free of charge, but the basement, I don’t think, is totally waterproof,” Bird said. “But to access the basement, the access is outside, and it’s a set of very steep concrete steps with metal door on top. It would be someplace we could store stuff, but those steps make me very nervous because our average volunteer is probably at least 80 years old or older. To be asking, you know, an 80-year-old lady to be carrying boxes up and down steep concrete steps, that’s not going to happen because I’m not going to risk somebody falling and breaking a hip, or worse.”
Relocating elsewhere in Saugerties might lessen the impact The Well can have on the people who need it the most.
“We would like to stay in the village because a lot of the people that we support live in the village and don’t have transportation,” Bird said. “If we move to say (Simmons) Plaza in Barclay Heights, that would be a couple mile walk for some people, and, you know, especially with little children in tow, it would not be a safe situation.”
Thus far, The Well hasn’t had much luck finding a new home within the Village of Saugerties, but their search is still fairly new.
“We are reaching out to the churches for any extra space they may have, and I sent a notice to everybody that’s a member of the Chamber of Commerce, and I reached out to some of the more prominent property owners in the town,” Bird said. “Those letters just went out, and I know that’s not going to happen overnight.”
It may not happen overnight, but a decision will have to be made fairly soon: Should The Well choose to leave either or both of their current storefronts, they have until the end of September to do so.
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