Food Co-op outlines strategy to cope with parking interruptions

||| FROM LEARNER LIMBACH for ORCAS FOOD CO-OP |||

The county and Jesse particularly are doing a great job with coordination, but the reality is the Co-op and members/customers will be severely impacted. Here is the email I put out today on our mitigation strategies:

The Prune Alley Streetscape project is beginning on Monday March 14th. There will be no parking in the project area during the first week (Please see details in the county announcement below). Going forward, I will be in close contact with Jesse, the project manager, and will send out communications to this list on a weekly basis with the subject line including “Prune Alley Streetscape Update”. Currently the hope is that parking behind the co-op on the Prune Alley side will be available some weeks during the project, and not others. We’ll have to take it week by week.

With that being said, we should all expect that the loss of significant parking in Eastsound will result in a lot of strain being put on the limited remaining parking, resulting in customers having a hard time getting near the businesses they are hoping to visit. All the businesses in Eastsound and their customers will be impacted, and we are losing at least half of the parking that is closest to the co-op. North Beach Rd. parking in front of the co-op is likely to fill up quickly.

To help reduce the pressure on parking, we can all work together to take fewer trips to town in our cars (walking and biking is a great option if you are able!) and to spend less time parked when possible. Fewer larger shops can help, as well as ordering for Curbside Pickup or Delivery. We’ll have a space dedicated for Curbside Pickup during certain hours and we are working to streamline the pickup process as much as possible so that you can park and get your order quickly, helping to keep more spaces free for others.

Free Home Delivery
Additionally we have decided to waive the $8 delivery fee during the Prune Alley Streetscape to help encourage more delivery orders. We have recently put work into adding more items to our online shop, and we are intending to have all or nearly all of our inventory available online. Despite delivery orders taking extra work for us to pack and deliver, we’d like to encourage co-op members to place orders for delivery because that requires no parking spaces to be taken up and that will benefit us all during this time. Currently we deliver on Wednesdays and Saturdays, with orders due the day before on Tuesday and Friday. If orders increase enough we will add more days in order to provide more options and spread out the load. We can also accommodate the occasional delivery on an off day, so please reach out with your needs and we’ll see what we can do.

Order delivery or curbside pickup at www.orcasfood.coop/shop