Recently I received messages from Co-op members about a community potluck of the "Old North Durham Neighborhood Association":http://www.oldnorthdurham.org, at which plans for the Durham Central Park area were discussed, including the need for a grocery store. This is the first of a series of posts discussing the possibility of a "*Central Park Market*" in Downtown Durham. Two more posts on this can be read at "CPM2":http://www.durhamfoodcoop.org/CPM2 and "CPM3":http://www.durhamfoodcoop.org/CPM3.

Not having been at the OND meeting and having to rely on other sources, I apologize if I misrepresent the events (if so, let me know and I'll attempt to fix it). Here's a rough description of the relevant part of the meeting: Bob Chapman of "TND Partners":http://www.tndpartners.com was up on stage at the OND meeting holding court for awhile. His stated purpose for being there was to discuss the old Strawbridge Studios building on Geer, which his company now owns and is refurbishing. There were calls from the audience for a grocery store, to which he responded along the lines of "We'd love to have a Trader Joe's, and we've been trying to talk with them about coming over here. We talked to Weaver St. but when we talked with [name] he said they had no plans to come to Durham, and brought up 'that other Co-op in town.'... There's been some talk of them moving, and if you all can convince them to do that, we'd love to have them. In fact, if all of you all joined up, you'd probably more than double their membership, so you could vote to move them over here."...

More descriptions of this meeting can be found at Co-op member Gary's blog post "Quick Update: Durham Central Park":http://endangereddurham.blogspot.com/2007/02/quick-update-durham-central-park.html at "Endangered Durham":http://endangereddurham.blogspot.com and Kevin Davis' blog post "Highlights: Tonight's OND forum with local developers":http://www.bullcityrising.com/2007/02/highlights_toni.html over at "Bull City Rising":http://www.bullcityrising.com.

A move of the Co-op to the Central Park area was at the heart of "Michael Bacon's Proposal":http://www.durhamfoodcoop.org/files/Proposal%204.pdf for the Co-op in May of last year. In fact, it came in second when the "votes on all proposals were counted":http://www.durhamfoodcoop.org/Vote. Given the dire financial situation of the Co-op at the time, the Co-op membership voted on a proposal that put implementing sound business practices first, taking input on policies and practices from other successful Co-ops. And while the Durham Food Co-op has made great strides since April of last year, many things remain to be worked on.

In my opinion, "moving the Co-op" at this point would not be a good idea. Here's why: there are fundamental structural problems that need to be solved - nobody needs the same dysfunctional business just at a different location:

# there are fundamental financial problems that need to be solved - nobody wants a business that is not financially solvent or has no accurate financial statements, etc
# there are fundamental leadership problems that need to be solved - the sorry state of the Co-op is due to lack of leadership, expertise and vision
# the Co-op's equipment is totally ancient and prone to failure, and there are only limited products on the shelves (and little back stock) - so what's there to move, anyway?

All of these issues are being worked on by the current board of directors, but it will take a while to really get to the roots of the problems and remove those. Only then is real progress possible - right now, the Co-op is on heavy life support, and we're trying to solve all issues at once with limited manpower and limited cash.

I do think that getting a discussion started, getting more people involved, will be helpful and useful for the Co-op as an organization, the membership, and the greater community. So I'm definitely interested in a healthy dialog, exploring possibilities and options, and at the end of the day the membership and the Board of Directors of the Co-op need to make important decisions.

Two more posts on this can be read at "CPM2":http://www.durhamfoodcoop.org/CPM2 and "CPM3":http://www.durhamfoodcoop.org/CPM3.