Yesterday afternoon, Casa Magnolia officially closed their doors. The space played multiple roles in the Springdale community: bookstore, cafe, art space and a third space for friends and families of all ages. Casa Magnolia hosted one last event on Sunday afternoon. Ozarks at Large’s Sophia Nourani attended and brings us this postcard.
“We’re at Casa Magnolia, downtown Springdale, on Holcomb Street, across from the fire station. I was a manager of the cafe. I ran all the teas in the house, special events in the house. Did some social-media work in the house, did some email work at home and in the house. So a little bit of everything here. Feeling really good that people showed up to this kind of event like this community potluck, end of our time here, but not end of our time together. So the idea behind the potluck just being like, if you didn’t already get to connect as customers to each other, this is one more chance that you have to kind of link up, because we are a bit of a community here, you know. So it’s nice to have people meet for the first time or meet for the fiftieth time, whatever that is. Yeah.”
“We wish it would have been a different route, but at the same time, it’s beautiful. Look at this, beautiful people. They’ve been showing up every day since we announced we were closing. So that’s why we’re doing this. This is about community. So that’s why we’re celebrating community.”
“So yeah, even though we’re closing down, we want to share the positive energy that downtown Springdale, I think, needs. And so hopefully someone else can continue a project like that. I think it’s really needed. We wish we had a little more time, but unfortunately, we don’t, but someone else probably will.”
“My name is Rosilla and I am here with all of the Casa Magnolia community. I have a couple kids, and we love coming here. This was a very special spot for us, that we felt that was very, a very unique place. And that it really brought community together, inclusive with, you know, just everyone. My kids were able to find Spanish books, which was very important to us being a bilingual family. And we loved having coffee here, just getting to know people. It’s a very unique, a very, very unique, little place that has something for everybody. So we will miss it. We will miss it. We hope, you know, sometime in the future, we can have another place like this one. Because it was different. You can find coffee, other places you can find. But this place was just very special and unique. That again brought everybody together. Regardless of everything that’s happening out in the world, this place brought people together. And that was very special.”
“I am hopeful about the bookstore is trying to find another location to try and stay in downtown Springdale. So if anybody knows a nook and cranny in Springdale that we could run the non-profit bookstore in—a donation-based bookstore in—I think there’s a good chance that a portion of the community would also kind of come with that bookstore. If we can maintain, like, some of the spirit of the community that Casa Magnolia was able to bring to downtown Springdale.”
Ozarks at Large reporter Sophia Nourani brought us those sounds and voices from the Casa Magnolia farewell potluck. She produces her stories in the Harold and Blanche Caulk News Studio.
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