Dear Founding Member,

The President of the Board of Directors calls for a meeting of the
Members of the New Orleans Food Cooperative on Wednesday, Sept. 3, at
7pm, at the Holy Angels Church cafeteria, located 3500 St Claude St, at
Gallier St. All Founding Members are requested to please attend.

The purpose of the meeting is to inform the membership of recent changes
in the plans of the Co-op to open a cooperative grocery in the former
Universal Furniture building at St. Roch and St. Claude. Those changes
are outlined in the attached joint statement of the NOFC and the New
Orleans Healing Center.

The media and general public will be notified in due course via
established channels of public communication; please consider this
invitation to be an internal announcement to our Members. At this time
the Co-op must rely on the thoughts, ideas, and concerns of its members
in deciding on a direction for the immediate future.

Please plan to attend on the third of September as we come together as a
membership to affirm common guidelines for seeking a new site, to learn
about and possibly join the recently established Site Search Committee,
and to continue to contribute to the development of our community-owned
and member-directed cooperative grocery in New Orleans.

Sincerely,

Budd Hirons, Jr.
Secretary, NOFC Board of Directors

========= joint statement on changes: ==================

Between November of 2007 and July of 2008, the New Orleans Food Co-op
planned to have its site within the New Orleans Healing Center, which is
to be located in the old Universal Furniture building at St Claude and
St Roch. The Healing Center is an ambitious project that will cost an
estimated $12 million; the Co-op will require $1.54 million to open.
Both the Healing Center and the Co-op have been searching for the
financial combination that will allow each to open, but economic
strategies pursued over the winter and early spring proved to be
problematic: state and city funding for the Healing Center have been
delayed; while the Co-op will need more monies than it had previously
planned. These intertwined economic realities began to threaten the
survival of both projects, a fact all parties have reluctantly come to face.

Because both projects are extremely important to the sustainable future
of New Orleans, the NOFC and the Healing Center have agreed to explore
other options. The NOFC is looking for a different site within the
70117 zip, and the Healing Center is looking for a different grocery
tenant. If funding and other issues could be resolved, the sites might
come back together again, but currently the Co-op is seeking another
site, which will allow it to pursue its goals with fewer uncertainties
about the overall site development, and without the competing interest
of the Healing Center’s need for funding.

Pres Kabacoff, who is spearheading the Healing Center project, pledged
to assist the NOFC to obtain public financial support. He expressed his
well wishes as both a developer and as a Founding Member of the Co-op:
“The New Orleans Food Co-op is a crucial project in the rebuilding of
New Orleans, and the group’s diligence in their business planning is
sound. I look forward to the opening of the store.”

================= end joint statement ==============

In the March 11th edition of the Gambit Weekly, the headline News & Views article focused on the co-op and the developing Healing Center. We are pleased to re-present this article in it’s entirety here by permission of the Managing Editor of the Gambit. The article is also available on their site via this link. Click more to read the entire article, and many thanks to author Sarah Andert and Editor Kandace Graves.

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An interested citizen took it upon himself to author this fantastic video promoting the co-op and idea of a locally-oriented member-owned storefront at St. Claude and St. Roch. Many thanks to Charlie for the wonderful video! The video is hosted on viddler.com, so if you have the time, please check out Charlie’s other inspired works. Congratulations and salutations to Charlie, one of our newest Founding Members!

A representative from the Food Coop 500 will be in town in early March to lead a business planning workshop. The Food Co-op 500 Program is a support system that seeks to enable a faster and more efficient start-up process to develop new retail grocery co-ops. These heavy hitters are getting behind our effort here in New Orleans.

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The Univesal project was described by James Gill today in The Time Picayune, and although much of the article focused on the off-topic issues for us, there were a couple of excellent highlights.

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