[B]URLINGTON — Onion River Co-op, which began in the 1970s as a small buying club, will extend its retail presence throughout Burlington by the end of next year if its plans to open a third City Market move forward.
The co-op recently said it is planning a store near Central Market on North Winooski Avenue that would be completed as early as the fall of 2017. It is already working on a second location, in the South End, that is to open in July 2017.
City Market’s director of community engagement, Allison Weinhagen, said the new locations would take some pressure off the downtown City Market, which has far outgrown its capacity for sales. The main South Winooski Avenue location, which has 12,000 square feet of retail space, was built to handle $20 million in yearly sales, she said. By the end of this year, the co-op will reach double that sales volume, she said.
The hope is that the South End location, which is to have 14,000 square feet of retail space, will absorb about 20 percent of the sales at the current location, allowing the co-op to provide better service, Weinhagen said.
“Growth is a natural process for success,” she said.
City Market opened in 1973 on Archibald Street and moved to a North Winooski Avenue storefront in 1989. The last major expansion was in 2002, when it moved into the current location.
That step left the organization struggling financially. Weinhagen said the lack of preparation for the financial results of the move won’t be repeated.
The co-op has long prepared and saved for this expansion and now has a financial adviser and an auditor who help make sure the finances are secure before major spending, she said.
“We will only make choices that are fiscally responsible for our members,” she said. The cost of the two new locations has not been finalized, she said.
The expansion into the Old North End is also seen as engaging a new customer base.
Surveys have shown that the demographics of City Market customers closely match those of Burlington, which means most people feel comfortable shopping there, Weinhagen said.
“But there is a mental block at North Avenue, where some people feel like this isn’t their store,” she said. “So we are hopeful that the Old North End store is their store.”
Few large or even medium-sized grocery stores carry fresh produce in the Old North End, said Teresa Mares, a Burlington anthropologist and assistant professor at the University of Vermont who has studied “food deserts” throughout Chittenden County. The co-op’s arrival will help make those foods accessible, she said.
Mares said that although the new store may affect some small businesses in the Old North End, the benefits of having a unionized, local and cooperative store far outweigh any other effects.
The co-op said in a news release that it has signed a tentative lease with the property firm Redstone for a space on North Winooski Avenue. The co-op has until Oct. 24 to decide whether to commit to the full term of the lease.
The cooperative is owned by 11,600 members and is run by a nine-member board of directors. The board elects the general manager, who is in charge of the rest of staffing, Weinhagen said.
Despite its growing size, the cooperative is committed to maintaining its identity as a community-owned and -driven organization, she said.
