Its shelves are filled, the stage is built, and now Mother Foucault's wants to buy.

The vintage bookshop announced Tuesday that it's seizing a chance to purchase the building it currently occupies, at 715 SE Grand. That opportunity expires on September 21, if it can't raise $300,000 for a downpayment.

Built in 1892, the Nathaniel West building houses Mother Foucault's on its first floor, artist studios on its second, and a finished third floor that bookstore owner Craig Florence wants to use for residencies and workshops. He has hoped to buy the building since his shop moved in—its inventory traveling just two blocks over from its longtime location on SE Morrison. 

The move itself was an act of physical community, as over 100 people walked the store's collection and furniture to its new space in approximately three hours—months before a similar Michigan "book brigade" went viral. 

When the Mercury profiled the soon-to-be reopened store, Florence joked about telling everyone he knows that he needed $1.5 million dollars. Now a team of shop supporters is working to make that happen, launching a crowdfunding campaign on GoFundMe and establishing a nonprofit to implement their dreams for a "space where misfits, dreamers, makers, radical readers, and visionaries collide."

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The name of the new nonprofit—l'école buissonnière—translates to "bush school" or school of the outdoors/life. It's a phrase that also connotes truancy in French, as when you skip school you are attending the school of life.

Mother Foucault's is already a place of poetry readings, book releases, and acoustic (and punk?) concerts. A release from l'école buissonnière says it will work to grow those programs and expand into seminars, workshops, "a center for literary translation, and an incubator for launching small press publishing," among other pursuits.

In the '90s, Florence lived at the Parisian bookstore Shakespeare and Company, and he's said he tries to recreate some of that feel at Foucault's. In the previous store, he hosted a writing residency in a cramped area behind his desk, and shop clerk Will Spray maintained a darkroom in a building bathroom.

Already, the second floor of the new building is home to several art studios and the gallery Society. Florence told the Mercury that the nonprofit plans to use the building's third floor to host programing, like residencies, seminars, and workshops.

The campaign has raised around $10,000 so far. [UPDATE: GoFundMe pulled the campaign down in its third day because the crowdfunding platform has a rule against donation incentives. Mother Foucault's removed the incentives it had offered—tote bag, t-shirt, and book bundle, etc., and the campaign was back as of July 25.]

"More than a bookstore, Mother Foucault's has also been an incubator, a stage, a meeting space, a dream space (and a dream) for writers and artists of all stripes where the dream of Portland thrives," reads a release accompanying the campaign announcement. "After surviving rising rents, economic upheavals, and a global pandemic, Mother Foucault’s now faces its greatest challenge—and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."