On Monday night, the co-op's board of directors gave the go ahead to plans to rebuild the grocery store from the ground up.
For almost five years, the board, managers, employees, shareholders and area residents have been debating how best to serve the more than 13,000 customers who pass through the store's doors each week.
"How can we best reorganize the co-op to continue in the long term to meet the needs of our customers, shareholders and employees?" said Alex Gyori, the store's general manager.
Four options were on the table, he said.
The first was to continue business as usual with no changes to the existing building, which was originally built in the early 1960s and has been renovated and expanded several times since then.
The second was to partially rehabilitate the building while the third was to fully rehabilitate the structure. The final option was to put up a new building and tear down the old one.
A team of senior managers tasked with reviewing the options looked at all the implications, especially environmental and financial, before settling on the fourth option.
"The best use of our shareholders money is to go new," said Gyori.
Just fixing up the building wasn't going to solve the problem of not having enough room in the
"And it wouldn't improve our carbon footprint," said John Hatton, president of the co-op's board of directors. "We're terribly inefficient relative to other grocery stores."
New fixtures such as refrigeration equipment will be installed to lower energy costs and waste heat from items such as compressors will be used in other places of the store.
In addition, the building will be developed with long-term projects in mind, such as the installation of solar panels and a green roof.
Initial plans call for a four-story building. The ground floor would house the co-op itself while offices would be on the second floor. The top two floors would be developed by the Windham Housing Trust as affordable apartments.
The new building is expected to cost $8.7 million. The project will be paid through a combination of bank loans, co-op funds, member loans and various grants.
The new building would have 14,000 square feet of retail space, as well as a new kitchen and storage area, but it's not just about space, said Gyori.
"A lot has to do with streamlining the store so it flows better."
Currently, the co-op has 10,500 square feet of retail space.
The old store will remain open while the new store is built, but more than 60 percent of the parking spots will be lost during construction. New parking spots will be installed and a retention basin will be built to catch stormwater runoff from the parking lot.
After the new building is finished, the old building will come down and the other commercial tenants now in the building will need to relocate.
Now that the decision has been made, the next steps include pursuing financing and beginning the design phase. Those two steps should give the board enough time to evaluate the state of the economy before pushing ahead with the project, said Gyori.
While prices have gone up on some items at the co-op over the past few months due to the increases in fuel costs, said Gyori, there has been no decline in the number of customers visiting the store.
Gyori said construction is expected to take about a year.
Bob Audette can be reached at raudette@reformer.com or 802-254-2311, ext. 273.
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