Co-op contemplates sudden move

By Zack Finch

Asheville, May 10— The members of the French Broad Food Co-op are deciding whether or not to allow the Board of Directors to sell their current location at 90 Biltmore Avenue. The sale would enable the co-op to purchase the first floor of the Sawyer Motor Building on Coxe Avenue, a site with three times the square footage of the co-op’s current available retail space.

The Board of Directors has been pursuing this opportunity since December of last year. However, many members feel they’ve been excluded from fully participating in the decision-making process.

At the end of April, members received in the mail a letter declaring the Board’s intent to purchase the new site. In order to raise sufficient capital for a down payment, the Board recommended the sale of the co-op’s current property. Because members are legally required to authorize the sale of any of the co-op’s significant assets, ballots were included in the mailing. Two thirds of all voting members are needed to approve the sale; ballots are due on May 14.

The deadline for the deal with Delphi Development is May 22, so the membership will not be granted the chance to vote on whether or not they actually support the move to Coxe Avenue. Voting against the sale of 90 Biltmore Avenue is the only way that members can express their dissatisfaction with the proposed move.

However, Board members have indicated that even if the membership forbids the sale, they might still find a way to go ahead with the Coxe Avenue deal.

This departure from the participatory structure of the cooperative dismays members like Amelia Nutter, who wonders, “As a member, shouldn’t I be asked, by ballot, if I want the Co-op to move in the first place?”

Charlie Thomas emphasizes the lack of democracy involved in the board’s decisions. “I don’t believe the mail-in ballot gives people a chance to discuss the real issue. There’s been very little opportunity for members to voice their opinion.”

Board member Rusty Sivils disagrees. “We are open to listening to the owners. The problem is, owners typically don’t voice their opinions because everyone is so busy.”

However, member-owner Darcel Eddins says, “the Board shouldn’t just assume we don’t want to play an active role. We should be provided at least three public meetings to discuss the issue.”

Last Monday night offered an eleventh hour opportunity for members to discuss the issue in the form of a question and answer session at Trinity Episcopal Church. The collective tone of the members was often that of frustration. Many of the fifty members present expressed exasperation at the lack of concrete information being made available to them. General manager Jim DeLuca was not in attendance and had failed to give the Board any projections concerning the economic viability of the co-op in its proposed location.

“Owners are being asked to make an important decision based on almost no information,” Eddins remarked. In fact, on Monday night, commercial developer Harry Pilos of Delphi Development offered the only real numbers. Pilos projected that if the cost of the redeveloped space comes to around 1.6 million dollars, the co-op could expect to pay a mortgage of nearly 10,000 dollars per month. At its present location, the co-op makes a monthly payment of around 4,000 dollars.

Some members worry that this new economic bottom line will force the co-op into becoming a different kind of store altogether — more motivated by a need for profit than by the original mission of the food cooperative, which in Terra Lee Kirk’s understanding involves “a not-for-profit environment that can educate the community about health foods and natural healing while supporting a sustainable environment.”

A condition included in the existing draft of the contract with Delphi Development requires 18 percent of the co-op’s product selection to be “mainstream products.”

A disappointed member-worker Marty Bergoffen laughs, “I can just go to Ingles for that stuff. It’s cheaper and a lot closer to my home.”

Although Mr. Pilos recently agreed to waive the 18 percent stipulation, some members remain concerned that the co-op would be required to make this compromise in product selection anyway, in order to ensure that the store will be able to service its new debt.

Former general manager A.D. Anderson is concerned that “what the co-op is doing is slowly removing itself from an important niche in order to join the niche already well occupied by Earth Fare and larger stores.”

Anderson represents others who believe that the site at 90 Biltmore “is a valuable asset whose potentials haven’t been fully explored.”

Worker-member Terra Lee Kirk agrees. “We have a wonderful location with thriving businesses all around us. There’s tons of space we’re not even utilizing.”

Kirk is referring to the building next door (recently rented to another business) as well as the space beneath the current warehouse. One member claims that the co-op currently owns over 20,000 square feet of usable space.

In the April letter, the Board wrote that, after paying 50,000 dollars in architectural fees, “We decided that developing on the current site would not work.” The primary reason is that if a gasoline leakage were discovered in the forklift building, “it could cost up to 200,000 dollars to mitigate the problem.”

The Board is hopeful that, despite the risks of gentrification, the co-op’s presence in the Sawyer Motor Building would “anchor the urban renewal of the entire two blocks of Coxe Ave.” Other members are optimistic that the close proximity of the proposed site to the hospital would boost sales as well as membership. In addition, the Board favors the 400,000 dollars in historic tax credits, although there is confusion over how the co-op will benefit from these credits since the French Broad Food Co-op is a registered non-profit and does not incur any tax liability to begin with. With so many aspects to the controversy and an imminent deadline, some members think there’s not enough time for members to make an educated decision. Bergoffen wishes “we could just slow down and think about it and not just rush right in.” Of course, the decision does rest in the hands of the Board, not the membership. At the information session on Monday night, worker-owner Lola LaFey pointed out that nine of the Board’s eleven seats might be changing over at the next membership meeting on June 24 and that it might not be appropriate for the current Board to make such a major decision at this time.

In addition, the Board is currently in the process of drafting revisions to the co-op’s articles and by-laws. Apparently these revisions regard the powers of the membership.

Cicada LaFey, a current member of the Board, imagines that the choice will soon be presented to the membership as to whether they prefer a more democratic system, in which the members have the right to make more direct policy decisions, or whether the members prefer the model of a representative democracy, in which an elected Board of Directors makes all the policy decisions.

Regardless of the co-op’s decision concerning the Coxe Avenue site, developer Harry Pilos says his firm is committed to putting a community grocery store in that building.

While Mr. Pilos sees the whole grocery industry as “leaning toward organics in the tradition of local food co-ops,” others see it the other way around: perhaps the cooperative model is increasingly in danger of leaning toward a more top-down, corporate structure of decision-making.

Leonard Peltier benefit a success

By Monique Turoff

North Carolina, May 7— The Raven Moon Café in Weaverville hosted a benefit for Native American leader and political prisoner Leonard Peltier. Over three hundred dollars was raised for the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee in Lawrence, Kansas. Performers included the Raven Moon Band, Mary Davis, Forgotten Dances, acoustic guitarist Michael Farr, and Danny Bigay who played Native American flutes. Presentations were given by the Leonard Peltier Support Group of Asheville and a member of the American Indian Movement from Columbus, Ohio.

Mr. Peltier is currently serving two consecutive life sentences at Leavenworth Penitentiary for the death of two FBI agents during a shoot-out in 1975 on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He has since been proven innocent of the crime he was convicted of by the Freedom of Information Act of 1981 which revealed that the FBI falsified evidence and terrorized witnesses in his case. Even the FBI themselves admit they do not know who shot the agents. Leonard has been tortured for years in prison due to inadequate medical care. Leonard Peltier’s parole hearing is set for June 12th 2000. To find out how you can help to free this innocent man call your local support group at 232-0951.