Wheatsville: What Happens Next?

[Editor's note: The following, written about a month or so ago, appears in the latest edition of the Wheatsville Breeze. Since many of you may not be Breeze readers, and as long as I'm throwing the coals back into my interweb engines, it seems appropriate to publish it here, as well, where I like to put these things. Enjoy. - Prof.]

Sometime between last night and this morning, our old dairy cooler was demolished. Like most things at this advanced (and quickly advancing) stage of Wheatsville’s renovation, it disappeared with little pomp or circumstance, quickly destroyed without the honor of attached onlookers to mourn its passing or dance on its grave.

That dilapidated dairy fridge was a perfect case for the pressing necessity of expansion. Out of date, inefficient, overfilled, and next to impossible to work in, it was a glaring example of our old store outgrowing itself. Stepping into its replacement is like night and day, a bright-shining-clean-new sparkle of spacious joy lighting the end of the long, chaotic tunnel we’ve been travelling down during this year of reconstruction. There are plenty of reasons to simply be happy the old monster is gone.

But moving forward also means leaving things behind. Plastered along the walls of that worn-down machine was a convoluted mess of photographs, drawings, clippings, graffiti, and oddities, a massive collage that may have been less than attractive but was impossible to ignore. It was, in a way that few other walls in the rapidly disappearing old store were, a historic monument, a physical entity that, in appropriately ramshackle manner, had captured a thousand little moments along the way from moving into an old Kash-Karry to knocking it all down and building it again. Here yesterday, gone today.

Our unfinished but suddenly visible metamorphosis has been met with wide-eyed praise over the past few days. Long-time owners and occasional shoppers alike wander around, taking it all in, travelling back and forth between the old and the new with dazed delight as though there were a time machine at the end of Aisle Four. Even someone who has never before laid a foot inside 3101 Guadalupe can plainly see right now what an exciting moment we’re experiencing. But what many of those happy customers may not realize, and what I doubt any of us yet fully comprehends, is that soon, that wormhole’s gonna close, and we’ll be left with just the one, new Wheatsville. Next week, the front end will reopen along a different coast of the store; by the time this is published, the whole project might be complete. Anyone who hasn’t stopped by in a couple months will find themselves walking into a room that’s practically unrecognizable.

The more nostalgic among us may feel overwhelmed by discomfort and despair. Our co-op is a place that many people truly love and care for; love and care are not things that most retail establishments can lay claim to. Inevitably, some loving, caring people are going to be deeply unhappy with the new Wheatsville for the very fact it is not the old Wheatsville. Unfortunately, it’s a moot point, and the best we can do is hope the shock of change does not diminish the depth of their love and care – we need it now more than ever. Regardless, not everyone is going to be pleased with such drastic alteration, and we’ll have to accept the validity of their reactions.

Conversely, though, there’s a real danger in unquestioningly embracing the newer and the bigger as the better. It should go without saying that our hugely improved facilities create opportunities to succeed on a scale we could only dream of before. However, what we all need to keep in mind is that there’s no chance to win which isn’t also a chance to lose. Lest anyone think that sounds unnecessarily pessimistic, I should point out that as I’m writing this, I’m also combing through a thirteen year-old Austin Chronicle article about a Wheatsville in a very, very different situation than it finds itself today. Growth and success have never been and will never be guaranteed, and there are multiple points in this cooperative’s 33 year history when it has teetered on the brink of failing altogether. Each time, though, we’ve managed to rescue ourselves, combining all that love and care with a whole lot of ingenuity, guts, elbow grease, and the grace of good luck.

So, the real question is: what happens next?

Walking into the addition, it is impossible not to be struck by the sheer magnitude of space. The towering walls above the delicatessen and the restroom seem so empty, the floors seem so wide, there’s so much space to fill in a store so oversaturated for so long. This space is not just physical. It’s mental and emotional and spiritual space, the kind that exists between moving into a house and making it a home, or plowing a field and planting a farm; it’s the real area that’s been vacated by those old spans of backstore-scrapbook walls. Every single one of us, as we cross into our new facility, is actively participating in filling these gaps back in. Consciously or not, we are redefining the whole of Wheatsville as completely as the contractors have redefined its infrastructure.

In the meantime, all we have are unknown quantities, endless decisions to be made, challenges to our entire constitution. The very essence of Wheatsville hangs on choices as small as whether or not to give a soda some shelf space and on legacies as large as being the grocery store where Cesar Chavez once stood. How much bottled water are we going to buy? How much are we willing to spend to certify fair trade? What will we do to juggle the necessity of profit with deeper missions and values not so readily quantified? These are questions we’ve always faced, but they now are, as we now are, larger than they have ever been before.

All this may sound awfully heady for a little old neighborhood store, but Wheatsville really is much, much more than that. The mere fact of being the only grocery co-op in the state of Texas makes us, to borrow the word from our old frozen buyer, an institution. We made it beyond the nascent stages that others did not. We predated Whole Foods and Central Market, and survived the behemoth pressures of their competition and co-optation. We have always been, and still are, on the front line of the battle for a different model of doing business, for ethical trade and ecological stewardship, for the survival of the family farm. We are the vanguard for people who care about what they eat.

Our expansion could not have come at a more critical time. While the store and the city it serves experience unprecedented growth and prosperity, the rest of the nation tumbles deeper and deeper into recession. Entrenched economic models are failing in ways not seen since the Great Depression – the Great Depression, which spawned one of the largest, most successful waves of American cooperatives, taking power away from bloated businessmen and bumbling bureaucracies and placing it in the hands of functional democracies. Alongside this financial turmoil, we are also witnessing an upheaval in our food system. Faced with an unsustainable industrial agriculture and an ever-growing litany of toxic recalls, the Obama administration is proposing sweeping policy changes, from crop subsidies to plant inspections to school lunch. Meanwhile, the First Lady tends a White House vegetable garden and serves fresh, local food to the homeless. Grassroots groups, running the gamut from CSAs to community gardens to parents concerned for the safety of their children’s stomachs, are blossoming in their numbers and their strength. It is a moment unlike any Wheatsville has ever seen. It is our moment.

Owners, non-owners, board members, management, staff, distributors, manufacturers, farmers, allied organizations, Austin, Texas, community, it’s up to us. We can go on without that beat-up dairy cooler, but not without the heart it held up. Welcome to the new Wheatsville. Long live its old soul.