It took longer than she originally envisioned, but Sarah Baroni, owner of Slate, a home goods and lifestyle boutique, is finally reopening at its new location in Burlington's South End. “We’ve had amazing community support and people just missing us and wanting us to be open again,” said Baroni, who closed Slate's brick-and-mortar store at 89 Church Street in February. She plans to unveil the new store, at 27 Sears Lane, Thanksgiving week. Baroni had initially planned to close Slate for just two to three months while she moved it into a new location. (The store continued doing business online.) However, after the real estate deal fell through, she had to scramble to find another spot. But Baroni thinks she hit the jackpot with the new one, which she jokingly refers to as "Slate 2.0." The current storefront, which previously housed a photography studio and artist space, required some "fast and furious" construction, she said, but provides everything she wanted. It's a stand-alone building with twice the space of the old store, ample storage and parking. Customers and delivery trucks can back right up to the door. When Slate closed earlier this year, some Burlingtonians interpreted its departure as just the latest Church Street business fleeing downtown for greener (read: safer) pastures due to growing public safety concerns over flagrant drug use, homelessness and crime. In the past two years, the marketplace saw the departures of the Body Shop, El Gato and Black Diamond; Outdoor Gear Exchange downsized, then opened an outlet in Essex. “We certainly had our struggles on Church Street. I’m not gonna lie and say it was perfect," Baroni said. "Theft was a really big issue, and customers were certainly deterred at times.” Nevertheless, Baroni emphasized that those issues were not her main impetus for moving Slate out of downtown. "I love Church Street. It’s one of the reasons I picked Burlington in the first place,” said the Cape Cod native, who moved to Vermont from Arcata, Calif., in 2016, then opened Slate the following year. As she explained, Slate's Church Street location was "logistically challenging" for a home furnishings store, with no place to park a delivery van. The old store's limited storage space also required Slate to maintain an off-site warehouse, which was inconvenient and costly. Slate's departure also provided longtime Bank Street bookseller Phoenix Books with the opportunity to relocate to Church Street. Slate's new…