Six months after launching a capital campaign to fund a $6.4 million renovation and expansion project, the Belfast Community Co-op is receiving pushback from a former board member over concerns that the project’s high price tag will ultimately be the death knell for the beloved downtown grocer.
The co-op’s leadership denies the allegations.
Arguments came to a head recently on social media when former board member Steven Boas launched the Save the Belfast Co-op website. Boas was elected to the board in February only to be removed in May. The board cited a breach of its code of conduct following his public protests about the renovations in removing him.
Boas challenges the project for its high cost and argues the renovations were not properly researched or communicated to members. His website calls for a halt to the renovations and is hosting a petition to remove six current board members.
“It’s not a private company, it’s a cooperative,” Boas said. “The manager and the board have a duty to do what’s best for the business, best for the member-owners.”
With such a substantial cost, he maintains the co-op should have considered purchasing other nearby retail space, expanding the building’s second floor or opening a satellite store in another location.
“They’ve tried their hardest, but they’ve made some mistakes here,” Boas said.
Boas isn’t alone in his criticism. Mark Durbin, another member of the co-op, echoed concerns over the price of the renovations and said it’s important to question the organization’s leadership when it comes to such a large project.
“We spend our hard cash there and I know that no one at the co-op is making it rich,” Durbin said. “That’s a huge amount of money to be putting into something like that, and is it really gonna be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that it seems to be painted as?”
Online, concerns were also raised in comments on a recent post in the You Know You Love Belfast If… Facebook group about the website. Several commenters questioned the cost of groceries sold there, wages, the cost of the renovation and the overall management of the co-op.
But board members maintain that they not only thoroughly explored multiple options through a six-year planning stage, and worked closely with members making their ultimate decision to stay in their current location despite the costs through public forums, meetings and Q&A sessions with directors.
“We are totally open with providing information that owners or anyone wants to find out about this,” said the organization’s Board Chair Susan Cutting. “We have nothing to hide.”
The co-op’s general manager Doug Johnson said there he felt like Boas’ site was “jumping to conclusions” without a full knowledge of the planning.
“This has been a project we’ve been on since 2018,” Johnson said. “There’re so many opportunities for engagement, for people to ask questions and to learn, and to be walked through the process.”
Longtime co-op member Zafra Whitcomb agrees. Whitcomb, who served on the co-op board of directors for over a decade, defended the co-op during the recent debate online. He said the website and call to remove directors came out of left field, and represents a lack of understanding of the amount of time, effort and deliberation that went into the project’s planning.
“If people really understood everything that had gone into this then they would have a different position about it,” he said.
The general manager and board of directors say there’s no plans to halt the renovations stemming from the website or petition, and said they remain optimistic about the future of the project
“We feel confident and excited about what this expansion is going to mean for our owners, and our community and our workers,” Cutting said.