Bethlehem Food Co-Op picks location
Communityowned grocery store set to open next year
After a decade of planning, the Bethlehem Food Co-Op has signed a lease for space to open a full-service, community-owned grocery store next year.
Co-op members announced the location at 250 E. Broad St. in north Bethlehem during a virtual presentation Friday night. The co-op is partnering with Peron Development and Boyle Construction for the project. Plans call for demolition of an existing one-story building on the property and construction of a new four-story building with the co-op as the first floor tenant and residential units on the upper floors.
Members did not specify when in 2022 the store will open.
A capital campaign will launch in the spring to raise $1.7 million to build and outfit the store. The funds will be raised from donations, member loans, bank loans and grants. Each of the nine members of the co-op’s board of directors also has signed a “leadership commitment” to financially support the new store.
The store will be open to all shoppers. Plans include soliciting local vendors to supply produce and products, as well as the inclusion of bulk bins, a community kitchen, community meeting room, small area for outdoor dining, a bike rack and off-street parking.
Cooperatives are memberowned and governed businesses that operate for the benefit of their members, according to the National Co+op Grocers. Members have a say in what type of goods they would like to see stocked at the store.
Members exercise their ownership by investing in co-op shares, patronizing the store and electing a board of directors to hire, guide and evaluate the general manager who runs the day-to-day operations.
The store will be about 6,500 square feet, 4,500 of which will be retail space. The Bethlehem Food Co-Op will lease the space for 10 years from Peron, said board member Carol Ritter.
“We have done some preliminary layouts to ensure the site meets our needs, but we will be hiring a store designer very soon,” Ritter said.
The group has been searching for a location for several years, but finding a location that met all of the co-op’s needs was difficult. Ritter said they wanted a store in a neighborhood considered a food desert, which is an area that doesn’t have easy access to fresh produce and healthy food options. According to the USDA’s food desert locator, the store would be in a low-income area where a significant number of urban residents are more than one mile from the nearest supermarket.
“Our benefit to the neighborhood is probably one of the best things we are able to do. We are owned by the community. We wanted it to be walkable and on a bus route,” Ritter said.
Bethlehem has committed $162,500 toward the project so far, mostly through community development block grants, said Alicia Miller Karner, the city’s director of community and economic development.
“We believe that access to fresh foods, the co-op model and a grocery store is a great asset for this community,” she said.
The market will be located in a LERTA zone created in 2017. The LERTA program gives property owners a break on real estate taxes associated with improvements or new construction on a site. The taxes on the new assessments are phased in 10% a year over a decade.
The clock on those benefits will start once the developer pulls the permit to begin work, Karner explained.
To celebrate the announcement, a banner announcing the site as the “future home of the Bethlehem Food Co-Op” was unveiled Saturday. From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. residents can drive up to the site to pick up co-op marketing materials or membership information for those who are not yet co-op members.
Initially organized in 2011, the Bethlehem Food Co-Op has more than 785 member-owners. The organizer’s mission also focuses on education, environmental and social justice initiatives. Memberships cost a one-time $300 fee, according to the group’s website.
The idea for the cooperative grocery came about that year when a Bethlehem resident was preparing a recipe, but realized she didn’t have a red pepper. By the time she left her downtown home, drove to the nearest supermarket and drove home, 40 minutes had passed, said board member Carol Burns.
“She said, ‘Why do I have to travel so far? Lucky me I can even get in my car and get a red pepper,’ ” Burns said.
That resident put out a call on Facebook asking if anyone would be interested in starting a co-op like the ones she had been part of in Pittsburgh and Buffalo. By the end of that year, a group of about 100 interested community members attended a public meeting and voted in favor of plans for a local co-op.
There are more than 200 food co-ops across North America, according to the Cooperative Grocer Network. There are 11 co-op grocery stores in Pennsylvania, though none in the Lehigh Valley.
This isn’t the first time the city has had a co-op grocery store. There was a Bethlehem Food Co-Op in the 1970s and 1980s, Burns said.
The store opened in 1971 and operated at 417 Wyandotte St., featuring natural foods, fruits, grains and vitamins, according to The Morning Call archives. The store was open to the public but offered a discount to members. The co-op closed after facing increasing debts and decreasing memberships.