Expansion Update! By Sage Turner, Finance & Project Manager
First off, a big thank you to everyone that continues to shop, support, volunteer, and work endless hours for our community owned Co-op. We’re doing it. We’re making a bigger and bigger difference in our community. We’re also making great strides in expansion planning and we have some new ways to fill you in and keep you up to date. We’ve now had 2 public meetings and 2 owner council meetings. The most recent one was on the 3rd of this month. Most attendees had signed up for owner council info at previous meetings held in March and June, and we want to make sure to extend an invitation to all owners to attend. Here is the official description of the Owner’s Council: An adjunct, ad hoc committee of the board of directors of the French Broad Food Co-op consisting of creative owners with positive, meaningful suggestions and ideas to be considered during the expansion process of the FBFC. We will offer input and work to encourage the full and enthusiastic support of all the FBFC owners for this historic project. Here are other ways you can find out what is happening with the expansion: • www.frenchbroadfood.coop look for the “Expansion” tab • COOP NEWS bulletin board at the front corner of the building, outside of the store. • Submit your email here: www.frenchbroadfood.coop/stayin-touch/. • Call list. If you do not have regular access to email or web and would like a call or text, please call us and we’ll add you to the list. • Flyers at the register. Staff are getting more and more questions. That is great! But we also need to get customers through busy lines and recognize that staff are all working harder than ever and may not want to be the champions of updates. We will now have a pamphlet/flyer to pick up at the check-out.
If you have questions about the expansion you send them to: Info@frenchbroadfood.coop Hopefully you saw the articles recently shared at Ashvegas.
com (Oct 29) and in the Asheville Citizen Times (Oct 30) and Mountain Xpress (Oct 31). A few staff and an area affordable housing guru chimed in. Their thoughts are also below in the press release at the bottom of this update. Where we are at now: • We have created a Development RFPQ – a Request For Proposals & Qualifications. That means we are reaching out to developers with the ideas we have created as a team and with your input, and asking them to propose ways their organization could be involved and to what extent. Ideally we will find a Master Developer, and it is possible we will form relationships with several developers - Mountain Housing Opportunities, for example. We’re asking them to evaluate how much of a role they can play and what they envision that looks like. We’ve also talked to Self Help, who champions Impact Lending and builds low income housing and commercial space. • The RFPQ deadline is Feb 1, 2016 • The Timeline for Development is to finish planning in 2016 and begin construction in 2017 • Multiple local organizations are submitting what is called continued on page 3