Choreographing a Move
As anyone who has ever coordinated a renovation or moved house can likely attest to, there are lots of moving parts and many details that need to be addressed for everything to come together. If done well, much like a well-choreographed dance, there can be little visibility of all that has to happen behind the scenes. With this post, I (Jeannine) hope to shine a bit of light on the flurry of activity currently ongoing behind the scenes at Eat Local Grey Bruce.
As referenced in our last post, the first step was finding a new home, then the real work begins. We must:
- Prepare the new space – identify needs, secure contractors and materials, paint walls, install utilities, and touch base with Public Health to ensure that the space meets requirements
- Plan logistical needs – sorting out new routing and schedules based on changes in geography, and planning layouts and warehouse processes
- Address administrative needs – updating insurance, changing contact info and mailing addresses, ironing out leases and our agreement with Grey County to vacate 396 th 14 th St. W, coordinating new services/utilities and ending old ones, and planning updates to the store to reflect logistical changes
- Manage the obvious task of getting things moved – book movers, work on layouts, get things torn down and built back up.
As we are a co-operative, there always has to be an understanding and balancing of the needs of all invested parties as best we can as we make our way through this process.
Which brings me to the important part, what I’m sure many of you have been looking to hear: “when is moving day?” We hope to only be closed for one week, the week of April 18th , to relocate our primary infrastructure, and to be open again and “business as usual” as of the week of April 25th . Of course, with any project of this size, there is always the “subject to change” fine print based on potential bumps along the way. There’s still a lot of work that must take place before we move in. We officially became tenants on April 1st (keys in-hand April 4th ) beginning our “fixturing period”, and have secured timelines with remaining contractors, allowing us to be more confident in and able to share our plans. We hope that everything will continue to roll out with the efficiency of a finely-tuned machine, and we’ll aim to keep folks updated if anything changes.
What does this relocation mean for our membership?
As mentioned before, we are hopeful that there will not be significant changes to most. A change in geography will mean some updated routing, which we hope to
communicate before too long – we are working through details at current. We are hopeful for some positive changes, including more efficient operations over the long term, and more convenient pick-up point options for those who have asked. We will be asking for some continued patience and understanding from our membership as we continue to work on getting moved and adjusting to a new space!
I often say that ELGB is as much about building relationships as it is about moving food, and this has come through in spades as we work through this relocation process. We’ve relied on relationships with contractors to secure work during these times of overbooked trades (thank you John Matches Heating & Cooling and Benedict Electrical!). We’ve worked on building new relationships with the Scott family, their Facility Manager Trevor Grose and new-to-us local contractors to ensure that work gets done in a smooth and timely manner. We’ve also worked very closely with the folks at Grey County to ensure respective needs were met as this process rolled out. Meg, Emily and I continue to work together to ensure that logistics and admin changes are completed as smoothly as possible. Our Heavy Lifting Committee, under the dedicated guidance of Board Chair David Walton, works at coordinating additional tasks relating to the move itself and final set-up in our new home. As always, thanks all of you in our wider community as well, for your continued support as we continue on working through this notable event.
Ongoing relocation highlights
- As of the end of March, SCP (our new landlord) completed many of the preparations required for us to take on the space, including electrical upgrades and the installation of partition walls.
- Work to prepare the floors for refinishing began on Tuesday (April 5th ), with some late plumbing work to also be completed this week.
- Finishing of the floors will be next week (the week of April 11th ), in advance of the moving of our walk-in cooler and the rest of our infrastructure the week of April 18th .
- The week of the 18th will see a whirlwind of activity, as contractors hopefully finish up their work in our space and we get everything moved in and organized.
