We as a Board understand your concern regarding Entrada. We spent more than three years having weekly meetings, in addition to extra time and effort for meeting with various landlords and developers, only to be told "No" after putting in months of work for each location. After the last location fell through, we almost called it quits. Our members were wondering if this store was really going to happen. Many were tired of waiting. But, we had one final location to consider, and that was Entrada (Main Gate Developers, Rick Reiss and Sam Gardner). We thought long and hard about being at Entrada; it was not a rash decision, and we had many talks with Rick and Sam regarding how they could help us make this store a reality. We also sought advice from our national cooperative market adviser, CE Pugh, who has come to Los Alamos each and every time we thought we might have a location for our store. CE was involved in our search for a location from the start, and was quite familiar with the Los Alamos scene. CE met with Sam and Rick, and he decided that this would indeed be an acceptable location for our market. He picked out the lot that he felt would give us the best accessibility and exposure.

Some of the reasons that our advisor felt this location would work for us:

• Ours is an isolated town. The members and general public will know where the co-op is located. Also, we will be highly visible to every visitor coming into town.
• People will have to drive past the co-op to go another 40 minutes to Santa Fe. Would this make sense? Even if one has other shopping to do in Santa Fe, it is far easier to do grocery shopping up here, allowing freedom to do other shopping in SF without having to worry about keeping groceries fresh while there.
• Entrada is only 3 minutes past the MeriMac Center. We understand that there is a psychological distance in this scenario, and this issue was discussed among our Board members at the time. But we decided to move forward with Entrada for the other reasons mentioned here.
• This location is more conveniently located between White Rock and Los Alamos, which makes it easier for those in WR to come shop.
• The commuters from SF and Española will find it more convenient to stop in on their way home.
• The buses are now running out to Entrada (from LA and from WR), which makes it more convenient for those who use public transit.
• A new canyon rim trail has been built which ends at the Co-op. This trail is relatively flat and can be a nice bike path for those who would like to bike to the co-op.

We did have conversation with the Shriners in our second year, but this was part of a multi-use development being considered at that time. The development would have included the co-op market; but it was dependent on the Elks, Shriners, and Hill diner selling their land for this project.  The Elks declined to sell at that time, and the developers could not build without all three enterprises in agreement to sell. Our co-op could not afford to buy the Shriner's property and develop it. The only reason it could have worked the first time, is that the developers were providing the funding, and we would have leased from them. The Shriners property is a smaller lot (no room for expansion) and more costly than Entrada.

We can understand your disappointment in not having our co-op downtown. We also were disappointed when nothing was available for us in downtown, because we had that same vision. But, after working on the Entrada site with Rick, Sam, and CE, we are more excited than ever!

And today, we finally have a natural food cooperative market in Los Alamos, a member-owned store dedicated to local and sustainable products.