Special Member Meeting 27 Aug 2008 (original) (raw)

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LiveJournal

A special meeting for owners in the Vancouver Food Cooperative was held on Wednesday, August 27, 2008. Beginning at 6:30 pm in the downstairs hall at Fort Vancouver Regional Library, 1007 East Mill Plain Boulevard, Vancouver, Washington 98663), the meeting was attended by about 75 people, despite a total lack of mention on the official calendar and the board's refusal to send out the required postal notice.

A summary may be found at http://www.vfcbizplan.com/vfcmasterplan but essentially the remaining board (four of nine elected, with one appointee) stated that:

  1. Possible locations have been expanded but limited to south of 78th Street and west of Andresen Road. This absolutely rules out stunts such as the secret Moxie Village nonsense that Sunrise had privately pursued, and I would guess that they are hoping by this change to place it at the previous WSU extension site, the former county poor farm.
  2. Any motions to move outside of this area would involve additional paid market studies
  3. The proposed store would be approximately 4000 square foot retail (6000 TSF) and cost approximately $1.5 million to build
  4. The owner goal for the end of 2008 has been dropped from 600 to 300
  5. Owner loan programs will be considered at approximately 300 owners

Those familiar with cooperative development will note that they basically presented Bill Gessner's "development 101" slides from last year, which elucidate the CDS "four corner" model. Having received a mailing from petitioners as per RCW 24.06.105, a number of owners asked about smaller stores or other models, but this board is not interested in discussing those at this time. A suggestion that they should visit successful start-ups such as the co-op in Yelm were warmly accepted but shall be ignored.

I am not hopeful.

More at http://VFCBizPlan.com

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