FORMER LINCOLN GENERAL Store owner Vaneasa Stearns, left, smiles with new owner Katie Clark inside the shop at 17 East River Road. Clark and her husband, Kyle, purchased the store with help from Lincoln residents and other partners last month and plan to keep operations running largely as usual.
Photo courtesy of Katie Clark

LINCOLN — For more than three decades, Vaneasa Stearns has been somewhat synonymous with the Lincoln General Store. 

The Lincoln resident has run the well-loved shop for around 32 years, helping its customers with anything from finding the goods they need to weighing deer, turkeys and bears during hunting seasons. 

Now, Stearns and the general store are readying for a new chapter. The longtime shop owner has sold the business to Lincoln residents Kyle and Katie Clark, who officially took ownership on Jan. 30. 

“It is both bittersweet and exciting to share the news of the sale of The Lincoln General Store,” Stearns wrote in a January Front Porch Forum post. “As you know, this store is about much much more than its ownership. In so many ways, it is the heart of our amazing town. It has been the honor of my life to own and run this store and to serve this community I love so much.” 

To purchase the shop at 17 East River Road, the Clarks have teamed up with a group of fellow Lincoln residents and with Chuck and Marna Davis, a Greenwich, Conn., couple with ties to Vermont and a history of financially supporting intuitions in the Green Mountain State. Kyle Clark said the team is excited to carry on the store’s legacy of the vibrant community space that Stearns has cultivated over the years.

“The general store is absolutely vital to preserving the community,” he said. “Lincoln’s a special place being tucked away in the mountains; the store has become the little centroid soul that everyone’s welcome in. I’m most excited about keeping that.” 

Stearns has operated the Lincoln General Store since 1991, though she’s been tied to the town for much longer. She grew up in Lincoln, relocating briefly for college and then to work as a buyer for a department store in Burlington.

Around 30 years ago, Stearns approached the former owners of the Lincoln General Store during a visit to her hometown. The owners were interested in selling and Stearns soon found herself taking over the business. 

Since then, Stearns has supported Lincoln residents and visitors through her work in and outside of running the shop. This past August, Lincoln residents organized a surprise gathering to thank Stearns for the contributions she’s made to the town through the years. 

The celebration attracted more than 200 of Stearns’s friends, family members and Lincoln residents and coincided with her plans to begin transitioning away from her work at the shop, a decision spurred by an ongoing health issue.

A NEW CHAPTER

Kyle Clark said plans to purchase the general store began forming after Stearns announced she was looking to sell the business. Originally, a group of Lincoln residents worked with Ben Doyle, president of Preservation Trust of Vermont, to explore operating the store through a Community Supported Enterprise model.

To do so, residents would form a nonprofit community trust to raise money to buy the store, make any necessary renovations, and then lease it to a private operator. 

“The vision was to acquire the store as a trust and place a general manager in place, but that was kind of taking quite a bit more time than was working for Vaneasa and her need to move on from the store,” Clark explained. 

The community trust group asked the Clarks if they’d support efforts to purchase the store sooner, and they agreed. 

“We stepped in and provided Vaneasa an offer with support from the trust, which is still in existence and figuring out how they’re going to support this transition,” Kyle Clark said. 

The Clarks received additional support from the Davises in acquiring the general store, a partnership Kyle Clark said has helped ensure there’s ample funding to tackle needed renovations and other projects at the shop. 

“It’s probably relatively well known that these 200-year-old buildings need a fair amount of tender love and care to maintain their charm and become energy efficient and continue to be viable commercial buildings,” he said. “With the Davises, we’re able to put some capital money aside to improve the property and make sure it continues to have its charm while meeting some of the goals of the community like energy efficiency, car charging, health and wellness and safety of everyone that comes in and out of those buildings.”

While the sale marks the beginning of a new chapter for the Lincoln General Store, the Clarks plan to keep things running largely as usual. Longtime store employee Jen Smith will take over as general manager and oversee daily operations, with the Clarks and others providing support as needed. 

BUSINESS AS USUAL

“(Jen will) determine stocking levels, inventory, she gets feedback from the community every day on what to put in the store and what best functions in the store and what hours and days to be open,” Clark explained. “The only place that Katie and myself and others will step in is if Jen has a broader capital project vision, like setting up outdoor seating areas or offering longer hours.”  

As the next chapter of the Lincoln General Store unfolds, Kyle Clark said he’s looking forward to maintaining a key part of the Lincoln community. 

“A town that loses its general store, everybody kind of suffers because they lose a sense of a welcoming meeting place,” he said. “We have the town hall and the church, but the store is there every day, and people go there to get their coffee, or their egg sandwich and get caught up with each other and see their neighbors. I’m excited to make sure we keep that.” 

Chuck Davis echoed that sentiment. 

“Very few places bind a Vermont community together like a general store,” Davis said. “It is an honor for Marna and me to support Jen, Katie and Kyle and the staff at the Lincoln General Store in maintaining this wonderful gathering place.”

Clark added he’s excited to work with Smith and residents to explore new ways the store can serve the Lincoln community. 

“Jen has talked about opening on Tuesdays, about staying open later when kids have soccer across the street, she’s really passionate about bringing students from (Mount Abraham Union High School) and other schools in as workers at the store,” he said. “There’s the excitement of just keeping (the store), it’s really special, but there’s the excitement of those little, incremental changes over time that continue to evolve with the times to keep the store the center of the community.” 

He encouraged community members to share with Smith and the Lincoln General Store team their ideas for the future of sthe hop.