Save Our Hybrid Bookstore: A Place Called Home

Dear friends, supporters and fellow book and wine lovers,

I am sharing our story with a heavy heart and final attempt to save the small business that has become home for many of you, A Concrete Rose. We have been sued by our landlord for back rent and the court ruled in judgment stating we have to pay $12,000 in 30 days and vacate the premises. This judgement is not a pay and stay. We cannot pay our landlord the alleged money owed and stop eviction (even if we had it). We plan to appeal this decision as there is much more to the case than the judge would allow us to bring up. Furthermore, we represented ourselves in court against our landlord and their attorney due to our inability to find representation because of the landlord's political and business affiliations in Lancaster. We've actively sought out attorneys and they have not taken our case due to a conflict of interest.

As you may or may not know, we embarked on this entrepreneurial journey with limited funding and resources but with a significant amount of knowledge of the community we planned to serve from experience and interactions with the community. Despite all odds being against our Black, queer and women-owned business, and being provided limited funding, we successfully opened our doors in October 2022 in Southeast Lancaster, PA, a place filled with beautiful Black and Brown people who have often been forgotten and/or displaced in the the development of Lancaster City. We have reached our goal of providing visibility, education and resources to this side of town time and time again. Although it was said to be a business no one would come to this side of town to frequent and allegedly said to be "a stupid idea", we have had a influx of visitors from all over the world and nation supporting our Black bookstore and curated events. From the beginning of this journey, we have been fighting to prove the relevance of our business despite numbers and supporters flowing in from all around. With limited resources, we still found ways to provide for our community and others who have walked in our doors.

In the past months, we have experienced various professional and personal hardships which made running a business extremely challenging. In June 2023, we returned from being closed for renovations to learn our wine had been moved, our air conditioner was cut off and approx. 60 gallons of our wine in fermenters have spoiled. Our attempts to contact the person who hired the contractors have failed and we attempted to move forward with an insurance claim for interruption of business. We are still in review for this claim. In the following months, we lost a significant amount of revenue but kept our doors open to try to make what we can with what we had. However, we could not make enough to cover our overhead and payroll, something that was already challenging to cover. Eventually, this resulted in us losing staff and rearranging our hours to work around our limited staff. In October, an accident left my wife and business partner, Solise, with a concussion, limiting her to little to no work, as she needed the time to rest and recover. She is still on limited duty as her recovery has been slow. As her caregiver, I, Evita, have fallen significantly ill shortly after a few weeks of caregiving and managing operations on my own.

Despite these challenges, we still attempted to find ways to show up and still provide our community with the safe space they needed while trying different things to increase revenue to pay our bills. Unfortunately, we could not reach the goals we have set financially and have fallen too far behind. This was something we didn't want to happen as it would possibly invalidate our experiences of mistreatment of which we were addressing. We are now at the point of eviction and as that is the focus, once again, our experiences have gone overlooked in court and beyond.

We are seeking to raise money to file an appeal of the decision and hire an attorney to represent us at the appeal hearing. We have until January 3rd, 2024 to secure an attorney that will represent us and file an appeal. We have tried to keep these things to ourselves as we feared the backlash we may face for speaking up about certain situations; however, we cannot go out without some kind of fight for ourselves, this business and the community we serve. We know $30,000 may not cover all of our legal fees especially with the extra fees on this platform but we wanted to start somewhere close to what we need. Our priority is filing the appeal with the required $12,000 but it is also priority to find an attorney to properly represent us.

If you are new to A Concrete Rose Bookbar Co, check out our website to learn more about us.

A Concrete Rose Website