Wild Fig Books and Coffee, a cooperative-owned bookstore in Lexington, Ky., will close at the end of the month after no longer being able to afford its rent, WKYT reported. The store is the only Black-owned bookstore in Kentucky.
According to cooperative member Sarah Williams, the building's owners have been unwilling to extend their lease and the rent of $1,100 per month is too high for the store to be able to stay in business. There had been discussions about creating a rent-to-own plan through which the bookstore could buy the building, but that never materialized.
"We no longer want to give further community effort into a space we can no longer be present in," Williams told WKYT. "We would rather take that time, energy and effort into finding a space that we can be long-term present in."
Griffin Vanmeter, one of the building's owners, told WKYT that he's sorry Wild Fig is closing, and that he believes the store provides a valuable service to the community, but the rent-to-own option was something proposed by cooperative-members that they were unable to make work. There was no mechanism in place, he added, for them to be able to purchase the building.
Williams described the store as being a victim of gentrification. Last August, Wild Fig co-op members raised community support to help stave off closure and look for a new, larger space where the co-op could reside long-term.
Wild Fig will host a community meeting this Sunday to form a plan about the bookstore's next chapter.