NORTHAMPTON — After 20 years of leasing its property at 330 North King St. and a $1.5 million loan campaign, River Valley Co-op now owns its land.
The co-op’s original 20-year land lease ended in December 2025, but included an option to either to renew the lease at a higher rate or purchase the property outright, according to a statement released by the cooperative.
River Valley General Manager Rochelle Purty said the co-op put significant care and consideration into the decision to purchase the property and ultimately decided to buy it to save money long-term.
“It’s a long-game investment — we had over 100 of our, of our co-op owners who loaned money to the co-op to, so that we could make this purchase — it’s sort of a trade off between making rent payments and making payments to our owners,” she said. “Over the long term, we will own the property and we won’t have increasing annual rent, or even the possibility that the property could be sold and that we might be priced out of the market.”
In December, the co-op announced it had surpassed its effort to raise more than $1.5 million through individual loans from co-op owners. The funds raised went toward completing the land purchase, addressing needed maintenance issues at the property, such as the parking lot and rock wall, and covering associated legal fees.
“We are deeply grateful to our member-owners whose enthusiasm and financial support made this purchase possible,” Valley Co-op Board of Directors Emma Woebbe wrote in a statement. “This milestone ensures that our community-owned co-op remains permanently rooted in Northampton.”
The Northampton site was originally a city-owned rock quarry operating from 1870 to 1921. Stone from the three-acre quarry was used to build and pave Northampton roads, according to the cooperative.
Purty explained that the cooperative, from its opening in 2008 until now, has been inching toward its goal to bring food security to the Pioneer Valley while also strengthening local farmers. She explained that it took 10 years of organizing from thousands of people to open the location and even more to bring it to the place where it is today.
“We started with a vision for having our own community grocery store that supported local farmers and supported and existed to support our community’s aspirations for local farming — it was just a grassroots fundraising process and grassroots organizing to to get people that were interested in making this happen,” she said. “We never even knew if we would really make it, but we did. The whole community that has supported all of our work and that’s what really what made it happen. It’s a community store, so community business, and, and this just makes us secure in Northampton against rising real estate price.”
Both Woebbe and Purty expressed gratitude to their long-term landlord, Billmar Corp., for its support over the course of two decades.
“At a time when our startup food co-op faced rejection after rejection in trying to secure a location, [the landlords] welcomed us into the old quarry property and worked with us to make our vision a reality,” Woebbe wrote.
