Here's how it works:
Absolutely destroy businesses with high taxation and regulation to the point grocery retailers flee the city.
Form various boards that collect tax money to give to other people who ask for money, like these co-op people.
Use the taxpayer money to subsidize inefficient and quasi-socialistic food co-ops without regard to free-market pressures.

WAY TO GO!

Yet another example of people attempting to circumvent the free market via regulation and taxpayer money.....

Why is it that co-ops only exist an places where the economy is completely screwed up?





Co-op gets $380,000 in financing from city

The Lexington Real Foods Community Co-Op secured the last of the loans it says it needs to build a new store, but the city feels the co-op's chances of repaying all of the loan are so small that it is giving part of the money as something of a grant.
Buffalo Economic Renaissance Corp., the city's economic development arm, approved two loans totaling $380,000 on Wednesday. The first - $180,000 - must be repaid. However, the second - $200,000 - has more lenient provisions.

The co-op must pay the interest on the loan and one-fifth of the principal every year for five years. However, if the co-op doesn't have enough money to repay the principal, the city will forgive the payment that year.

"I think what it amounts to, quite honestly for us, is a gift," said BERC board member Clifford Bell, who voted to approve the financing in an unanimous decision.

"We might have to make a grant the first or second year," said board member Andrew W. Dorn Jr., president and chief executive officer of Greater Buffalo Savings Bank. "Hopefully, they'll be very successful in increasing revenue. Parking and location are the two biggest things that drive retail sales."

However, the Lexington Co-op feels confident that its sales will increase from $1.9 million this year to $3.4 million the first year the new co-op is open. The co-op expects to demolish the former Willis & Lowe store at Elmwood and Lancaster avenues in October, build a new store during the winter and open it in late spring or early summer.

"If anything, we believe they're too conservative," said Tim Bartlett, the co-op's general manager. "With moving from a side street to Elmwood Avenue and adding parking and quadrupling our retail footage, we don't feel we'll have a problem."

The BERC funding is coming from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's block grant money. The co-op is eligible for the funding - whether it be a loan or grant - because it is creating at least 20 jobs. At least half those jobs must go to low- to moderate-income workers.

The entire project will cost the co-op $3.2 million, or $711 per square foot of retail space. The co-op raised $560,000 in loans from its member owners and got a $1.6 million loan from the National Cooperative Bank in Washington, D.C.

It also got a $100,000 loan from the Local Enterprise Assistance Fund, an organization in Washington, D.C., that provides funding to co-ops; A $180,00 loan from the Erie County Industrial Development Agency, and a $300,000 loan from the Northcountry Cooperative Development Fund in Minneapolis, Minn.