What is it about shiny things that captures people's attentions so? Take the rundown Bessemer Shopping Center on Phillips Avenue for example. Yes, it's true, my community expressed a desire for a grocery store, drug store, medical center, job training center and space for a few more businesses there. But contrary to what developers, media and city council members have lead Greensboro taxpayers to believe, I have yet to attend a single community meeting where anyone from my neighborhood except perhaps with the exception of Goldie Wells, state that we wanted a shiny new shopping center. Or that the entire shopping center had to be remodeled all at once.
As a matter of fact, it was my understanding all along that the Bessemer Shopping Center would be restored one store at a time as tenants (businesses) are found who want to locate there. The community, my community, a community I've lived in longer than Goldie Wells or any of our other so-called community leaders, is not asking for shiny things. Goldie Wells is no longer on City Council and does not speak for us.
So why all these pretty pictures from developer groups headed by Skip Alston and George Carr? We didn't ask for that. The Renaissance Community Co-op is looking for space for a grocery store. Everyone knows that once you get a grocery store to anchor a shopping center, other stores follow. As a matter of fact: the fact that the RCC exists is the only reason these developers are interested in the first place. Otherwise they would have been there already, before the co-op movement began.
And there would be no need to be having this conversation.
Tell Goldie, Skip, George Carr and Jim Kee we don't need their shiny things, we don't need their monopolies-- we need the Renaissance Community Co-op without the developers.
And remember: a successful grocery store co-op in my community could serve as an economic model that could be duplicated and raise the standard of living in neighborhoods all over Greensboro-- even Greensboro's most prosperous neighborhoods. And therein is the reason the very thought of a little co-op in Northeast Greensboro is scaring the life out of Greensboro's developer class. For to compete on a level playing field is a game they hope to never have to play.
