Setting Sights On Fresh Food & Community, Food Co-op Members To Open Caton Avenue Site Saturday

In the beginning, there was Jack O’Connell.

A Windsor Terrace resident since 1985 , Jack was getting ready to retire in 2012 when he went to a meeting about the much-contested decision to replace the Key Food in his neighborhood with a Walgreens. There, amidst the raised voices and controversy, Jack quickly discovered what he would soon be dedicating much of his time to: creating a food co-op that would be as much about offering the fresh produce that was difficult to find in the area as it was about being a gathering center for a diverse community.

Now, after more than two and a half years of meetings and organizing and doubts that this could indeed happen, Jack O’Connell — and close to 400 others — are about to celebrate the opening of the Windsor Terrace Food Co-op at 825 Caton Avenue, between E. 8th Street and Coney Island Avenue.

At 10am this Saturday, March 20, the food co-op, which has members primarily from the Kensington, Windsor Terrace and Prospect Park South areas but which is open to anyone, will fling open its doors to a community that seems to have wholeheartedly embraced the spot that makes its home right next to the school being built on Caton Avenue and E. 7th Street.

“The excitement has been…” Jack trailed off, finding himself wordless as he smiled and looked around the food co-op building, a former health spa, Thursday – when he and numerous other volunteers spent the afternoon in a flurry of mopping and sweeping to make way for the produce’s arrival on Friday.

“I’m really proud of what this group has accomplished,” Jack continued. “However, the good things have just started to happen.”

When the co-op opens on Saturday (which anyone is welcome to attend, but you’ll have to be a member to shop there), it will be “primitive,” Jack warned – but he and other members stressed that it will quickly grow.

“It’s not going to look like Whole Foods,” Jack laughed.

And while the space is not giant, it is, members said, the culmination of the hard work of so many neighbors — a grassroots effort to create something from nothing.

“It’s food being a vehicle for bringing people together,” Jack said.

For the first month, the co-op will be open from 10am-6pm on Saturdays and Sundays, with the venue offering just produce this weekend and then branching out to dairy and more in the coming weeks. Right now, the group is working with one organic distributor, who also delivers to the Park Slope Food Co-op.

“By summer we’ll have a whole battery of different providers,” Jack said, noting that they’ve received offers from spots throughout the area to supply everything from cheese to vegetables and more.

As Jack spoke, more and more volunteers began to show up, brooms and mops in hand, to clean the space Thursday afternoon. And they – -the retirees, the parents, the community activists, the students — said, as they took sponges to sawdust-filled floors, said they couldn’t wait to show the neighborhood what can be done when you give up relying on places like Key Food to offer produce and take matters into your own hands.

“For us, it’s about building community — this is an opportunity for people to come together,” said Anne Suddaby, who arrived with her 5-year-old daughter, Clio. “A lot of people have not built something from nothing before. This is creating something brand new. It’s exciting and messy and exhilarating. It’s all of those things.”

Navigating the countless emails about the co-op, Maria Clausen stood at the computer, on a table that will soon be flanked by a cash register and neighbors with kale and beans and other produce in hand.

“It’s what the community wants – there aren’t a whole lot of options for really good produce year-round,” Maria said. “This is for the community, by the community.”

As the sun set, members wiped their brows, laughing as they got to know people they’d never met over vacuums and sponges and sawdust. And, opening the door to hang signs about the co-op, their smiles grew even wider as a woman passing by yelled into the space, “Very exciting!”

The Windsor Terrace Food Co-op is located at 825 Caton Avenue. It will be open from 10am-6pm Saturdays and Sundays. For more information, you can visit the co-op’s website.