The Bull in Full

DFC: Thoughts from the annual meeting

Woot, the blog got a mention in this week's Durham News.  World domination is imminent!

Seriously, Jim Wise did a nice piece on the conflict over the Durham Food Co-op, although it would have been nice if he'd made clearer that the annual meeting was today, and where it was.  Oh, well, any pub is good pub, I guess.  (For those looking for the "detailed analysis" he referred to in the article, it exists in an earlier post, but also don't miss my post on locations as well.  Or use the DFC category page to read all my analysis.)

It's getting late-ish and I've had a hell of a weekend, but I'm going to try to write up my thoughts from today's annual meeting, or at least what I saw of it.  (I had to slip out early to make it to my choir concert and hunt down a bowtie beforehand, so I missed the election.  Also forgot to pay my dues before coming, so I didn't get to vote.  Doh!!!)  If someone has additional notes or news from the rest of the meeting, please drop them in the comments.

Co-op Locations and Grocery Stores in Central Durham

As some of you probably know, I've been involved in an effort to re-examine the location of the Durham Food Co-op, with regard to whether or not the co-op should continue in its current location or evaluate other options.

One of the proposals on the table is to relocate to the Central Park area.  One of my contentions has been that, while the Co-op frequently talks about serving an underserved community, that the West End and W. Chapel Hill St. are actually better served than many other areas of Durham.  Another way of looking at this is that the co-op is the closest grocery store for a very, very small number of people, and could perhaps serve Durham better in other locations.

I didn't realize quite how true this was until I started fiddling with Google Earth, and making a grocery store layer for the downtown area and surrounding neighborhoods.  (clicking on the link should open it in Google Earth if you have it installed.)   I've included both the current location of the co-op, and a generically placed Central Park location.  (It's just at the corner of Rigsbee and Corporation at the moment, not attached to any particular building.)   Also, even though I end up with stores in HIllsborough here, that's just an artifact of the way I built the thing.  It's complete, minus tiendas and convenience stores, to the best of my knowledge for central Durham, but loses completeness quickly as you get a ways north of 85, or east of Miami, and so on...

One thing which throws a whole wrench into this process is the imminent opening of Parker and Otis in the old Fowler's location, along with their announcement that they'll carry more regular groceries.  On the one hand, this further restricts the co-op's "natural" service area at its current location, meaning it's hemmed in basically on all four sides by other grocery stores not too far away.  On the other hand, the new Parker and Otis location isn't far from my proposed locations for Central Park, which change the tenor of that too.  Before, the new co-op would have landed in a wide-open sea of medium density residential of widely varying incomes with no grocery store to serve them.  Now, Parker and Otis hems that in on one side (although ONLY one side).

If I've missed any significant entries, here, or if you're having trouble with the link (you do have to have Google Earth installed), please let me know.

The Durham Food Co-op and the Co-op Confidential Collective

Since Steven Matherly has seen fit to drop an off-topic comment in a post on this blog, I'll go ahead and say a few words about my perspective on the Co-op Confidential Collective, consisting of Matherly, Jamie Williford, and Wells Eddelman, and their objections to the way Denise VanDeCruze and Sven Rinke, along with the others on the current board of directors, have been handling the affairs of the Durham Food Co-op.

My insights mainly come from a few electronic communications, conversations I've had with Sven and Denise, and the most recent board meeting (February), which I attended in large part to find out what all the fuss was about.  I've also read most (if not all) of the material posted on their blog in an attempt to fairly gauge what they are trying to say.  I don't pretend to hold some special knowledge, other than that I've witnessed some of the interactions between the two camps first hand, which I guess a lot of co-op members and adjuncts might not have.