Grocery looks to begin 8-month project soon

On Sunday afternoon, hundreds of people crowded into the newly acquired spaces of the First Alternative Co-op north store, 2855 N.W. Grant Ave., during an open house celebrating plans to expand the store.

Attendees were treated to samples, live music and arts and crafts activities for children.

In addition, many took part in a tour of the premises, which offered a behind-the-scenes look at the store’s current operations and insight into the planned expansion.

The Co-op will soon begin a $750,000, eight-month building project to double the size of the north store, which now occupies 3,500 square feet of retail space.

When the expansion is finished next spring, the store will be almost 8,000 square feet.

“That’s just a bit bigger than the south store, but with higher ceilings,” said Co-op general manager Michele Adams on Sunday.

The plans include expanding the store into nearly all of the adjacent space on the corner of Grant Avenue and 29th Street, including reconfiguring the space occupied by the store’s current location and then adding the space once occupied by other businesses in the shopping center and the building that formerly housed Miller Paint and later Your Green Home.

By Sunday, the previous tenants had already moved out of the spaces the Co-op will use in the expansion.

The Co-op will sublet a space at the back of their newly expanded lot to former tenant Magic Mirror Beauty Salon, and Northwest Graphic Imaging has moved to a location on Fourth Street by the Whiteside Theater in downtown Corvallis.

In addition, the Co-op now owns a house adjacent to the east parking lot, that will be rented out. At some point in the future, the Co-op could move the house to another location and convert the area to parking, according to Adams.

On Sunday, Adams led one of the many tours through the cramped maze of back rooms and corridors currently used for offices, food preparation and storage.

The new spaces acquired by the Co-op will eventually make the store more cohesive and spacious, but bringing the disconnected sections of the building together during the construction phase will cause certain challenges.

For example, stock will have to be shuffled at various times to keep it safe from the elements.

“One thing we have to do is take out this ceiling at some point this winter,” Adams said while pausing in the main store room.

According to Adams, part of the impetus to get the expansion going as quickly as possible — as opposed to waiting for next summer to do roof work — is the rumored arrival of a Market of Choice in Corvallis in the next few years. That would force the Co-op to compete with the larger chain store, which sells both natural and conventional groceries.

“We have to grow before they get here,” Adams said.

But, the expansion is mostly about providing customers with more options and growing the store in a sustainable way, according to retail operations manager Jim Dobis.

Dobis said that when it rains the current uncovered unloading area is “miserable.” The expansion plan calls for a large covered area that would provide a place to unload products for the store as well as expanded bicycle parking for staff and customers.

The new store will also feature solar panels and other green features.

Dobis anticipates that with the expansion the store will have about 50 percent more bulk items, 20 percent more produce items, 30 percent more grocery and health products and a deli section that is two or three times the size of the current area.

For information on the Co-op’s north store, see www.firstalt.coop.