A   V I E W   F R O M   C H A R L O T T E T O W N ,   P R I N C E   E D W A R D   I S L A N D

HOME PAGE | ABOUT THIS WEBSITE | RSS

Our Co-op Store

Downtown Coop On May the 9th the Annual Shareholders meeting was held for the Central Farmers Coop Assoc. . It was continual bad news. They are in debit over $1m and, altho' they didn't call it that, Co-Op Atlantic called their loan and it forced them to sell both Charlottetown buildings to them. The discussion at the meeting was about that, the new Basic Store at Oak tree Place and about establishing a Members Relations Committee to come up with ideas for revitalization the shopping at the Coop. Unfortunately we had to push to have them even discuss the downtown store and then the best that they could come up with is "business as usual" . They waxed elegantly on how it is holding its own now since they are doing no outside of store advertizing, paying less for bags, buying better and trimming staff. Not reassuring. There was no mention of service, quality of produce or understanding of the customer needs - at least by Board and Management. With some push from a couple of people in the audience , they suggested they might give it a fresh coat of paint, but that was it. The offer is out for Member Relations Committee if anyone wants to try, but it was certainly a discouraging meeting. By the way the price they got for the downtown store was not very impressive; I think it was $165,800 or 125,000 [sorry about that], but less than I thought property downtown was worth. Harry O'Connell the chair of the new downtown Business Assoc. is going to speak at the Downtown Residents Meeting so if you have any suggestions for our commercial needs downtown this will be the time to vent them.


Written Wednesday, May 24, 2000 at 03:04 PM




(c) 2000 by Catherine Hennessey. Questions or comments? Email me@catherinehennessey.com

Website design and construction by Reinvented Inc.

ISSN 1496-3108