More than the many other business closures of recent months, the announcement that the Green Lantern restaurant on Serpentine Road is to close has resonated deeply in the community.The owners of the 70-year-old institution have blamed the decision on the economy, and that is undoubtedly the main reason.The restaurant has seen increased competition in recent years, and this will have played a part in the decision. But in a buoyant economy, many businesses have the ability to survive, or at least some optimism that with hard work and innovation, conditions will improve.And the economy undoubtedly has taken its toll. There was probably a presumption at the beginning of the recession that family restaurants like the Green Lantern would fare better than pricier establishments, because even if some regular customers stopped eating out, others would “trade down”.It’s a demonstration of the length and severity of this recession that that has not been the case. There is hardly a business or family in Bermuda that is not feeling the effects of the recession, and feeling it badly.Yet other businesses have gone in this recession. So why has the Green Lantern closure struck a particular chord?Obviously it is a decades-old institution. It has been in the same location for 70 years and has been owned by the same family for much of that time. Generations of neighbours, area workers and passers-by have been customers, and as the memories recorded in today’s Lifestyle section show, it has a place in their hearts.It survived the vicissitudes of the Second World War, the advent of the motor car which changed grocery stores and restaurants dramatically and the meteoric economic changes that Bermuda enjoyed in the second half of the 20th Century before it was finally felled by the Great Recession.But the Green Lantern’s great importance lies in the fact that it was a black-owned business, begun at a time when that was an exception to the general rule, and its owners were faced with disadvantages and obstacles that today’s young Bermudians would have difficulty imagining.Even without those challenges, to keep a business in one family for 70 years is a significant achievement. Many companies bearing supposedly more distinguished names than the Green Lantern, have come and gone in that time, so that it is perhaps something to be proud of and not a matter for regret.But what no one should forget is that the Green Lantern was finally done in by a recession, the worst effects of which could and should have been avoided.That Bermuda would have been hurt by the global recession of 2009 is undeniable. That Bermuda continues to fall in an economic spiral is a result of our own failure to prepare and because of a consistent failure to remedy our home-grown problems is also inarguable.No business closes because of one poor decision or of one factor.But when the history of Bermuda’s Great Recession is written, the failure of Government to foresee its severity and length, coupled with its own policies that have driven business away from Bermuda, will be a consistent theme.