KENSINGTON — The long-planned Windsor Terrace Food Co-op finally has a place to call home.
Organizers of the member-run grocery signed a five-year lease on a storefront at 825 Caton Ave., at East Eighth Street, the group announced Jan. 8.
The new food co-op is modeled after the Park Slope Food Co-op — only members can shop there and members must work a set number of hours at the store in exchange for the privilege of buying lower-cost, mostly organic produce.
Organizers are aiming for an early spring opening, Windsor Terrace Food Co-op member Jack O'Connell told DNAinfo New York in an email. The 700-square-foot space they've leased was previously a spa that offered acupuncture and colonics. Organizers will have to install equipment such as refrigerators to get the new co-op up and running, member Mario Caggiano said.
Locals spent more than two years working toward forming the new food co-op. In December 2014, they announced that they were close to signing a lease, but needed 100 members to move forward. Shoppers quickly signed up and the group met its goal. The cost to join is $100.
So far more than 300 people have signed up, Caggiano said.
Though the store is on the border of Kensington and Windsor Terrace, it's named after Windsor Terrace because the idea to form a food co-op was hatched in that neighborhood after the sudden closure of the Key Food supermarket at Prospect Avenue and 11th Street. That Key Food is scheduled to reopen sometime in early 2015.
