by Jack O’Connell
The alarm rang in Windsor Terrace early June 2012. Key Food, the community’s supermarket and dreary produce epicenter between Prospect Park and Green-Wood Cemetery, announced it was closing. The anger generated by the closing motivated five hundred Windsor Terrace residents to jam into the Holy Name Church auditorium. The frustration that exasperated residents that evening gave birth to the Windsor Terrace Food Cooperative.
The gestation period lasted more than two and a half years. A hardy band of newly introduced neighbors met monthly to report on whatever progress they had achieved, however meager. Social media served as the call to organize. The group grew larger as time went on. Meetings were held with other local coops. How did they work? What did they do? How much money was necessary? Where could the Coop operate? Could we succeed?
Bylaws, guidelines, incorporation, all took time. But THE SPACE was proving to be an insurmountable problem. The search for a place to operate reinforced the belief that gentrification had not only taken the neighborhood’s only supermarket, it also brought high rents into a region where commercial space was already at a minimum.
Inquiry after inquiry, space after space, affordability remained
Then, November, 2014, an email! A For Rent sign was spotted on Caton Ave. Not quite the center of the community, but the rent was doable. The moment of truth! Over Thanksgiving Holiday, 2014, more than 300 residents committed $100 membership fee and the Coop was off and running.
On March 21, 2015 the doors swung open and members poured in to purchase the organic and locally grown produce displayed in cardboard boxes on borrowed folding tables.
Today the Coop is literally a small business, run totally and cooperatively by its members. It now provides organic and pesticide-free locally grown produce, free range eggs, nitrate-free meat from grass-fed animals, kombucha from a tap, bulk items, and lots of other well-sourced and minimally-packaged groceries.
Best of all, the coop has become a place where its 400 members have evolved from neighbors into friends. Healthy Friends at that.