To the beat of a snare drum and blaring horns, the Hyde Park Co-op was laid to rest Sunday alongside the dream that gave it birth 75 years ago.
A grocery store more likely opens than closes with fanfare. But this one, a longtime linchpin of the Hyde Park neighborhood, was a supermarket of ideas no less than canned goods.
“We’re here to celebrate the life of the Co-op,” said Winston Kennedy, 81, addressing several hundred former customers and shareholders who assembled in the produce department a few hours before its doors closed for good. A group of musicians had just played “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” the traditional anthem of a New Orleans jazz funeral.
Former 5th Ward Ald. Leon Despres, a founding member, recalled how the Co-op was founded during the Great Depression from a vision that a better society could be built from the bottom up. It would not only sell groceries, but also spread the word that cooperation between human beings was better than cutthroat competition. It stood for honesty in an age of shady business practices.
“The Co-op took the butcher’s hand off the scale,” said Despres, 99.
Yet some in the neighborhood, focused less on social values than the food itself, believed the store had slipped in recent years, despite a new manager brought in to update the offerings.
To casual shoppers, the Hyde Park Co-op would seem no different from any other supermarket. But to members, it was an enterprise of which they were the owners. A small fee entitled them to an annual rebate for purchases made. Any profits went to members-owners as dividends.
Decisions were made by a show of hands rather than by officials at a distant corporate headquarters — a form of neighborhood democracy that inspired loyalty to the very end.
The Co-op traced its ideological roots to 19th Century England, where textile workers opened their own commissary as an alternative to the factory owners’ company stores. From there, the cooperative movement spread to the United States.
Kale Williams told the crowd how it was natural for him to become a Hyde Park Co-op member when he came to Chicago in 1966.
“I grew up in rural Kansas, where farmers joined together in grain cooperatives,” said Williams, 82.
In the past few months, however, as the Co-op reached the end of its days, the membership’s discussions were acrimonious. To the very end, some thought the institution could be saved. Others thought the red ink on its books insoluble.
In recent years, some customers were turned away by the store’s outdated appearance. There were complaints about product quality.
Its decline was quickened by the very corporate giant-ism it was founded to combat. It opened a satellite store on 47th Street in Kenwood, a neighborhood once in decline but gentrifying.
But the timing was off. Opening before there was a local constituency for its peculiar blend of upscale products and social vision, it failed, leaving the parent Co-op stuck with a million-dollar lease.
Members finally voted to accept an offer from the University of Chicago, landlord for the original store, to pick up most of the Co-op’s debt. The space soon will be occupied by Treasure Island, a chain with branches in trendy neighborhoods.
