It only took about two weeks for the partners behind the Astoria Food Hub to raise the $700,000 necessary to complete the purchase of the former Sears Hometown Store.
The partners, who reached the fundraising milestone Sunday, plan to renovate the former appliance store on Marine Drive into a retail, processing, storage and distribution hub for local food producers. They hope to open in the fall.
The partners behind the Astoria Food Hub plan to close on the former Sears Hometown Store on Marine Drive in the coming weeks after raising $700,000 toward the purchase of the building.
The food hub raised the money through Steward, a commercial lender that gathers money to cover the cost of the loan from public investors who earn back principal and interest. Jared Gardner, the owner of Nehalem River Ranch and a central partner in the project, said the $700,000 would be paired with around $120,000 invested by the partners.
“That takes us through the down payment, and all of permits, historic review,” Gardner said. “We have some engineering fees. It gets us all the way to the fully submitted documents to the city, so we can then line up the next phase, which will be the construction costs.”
Warren Neth, who markets for Gardner’s ranch and the food hub, said 164 people joined the loan with a minimum investment of $100 to more than $20,000 by some contributors. Much of the support came from people with money in savings who wanted to earn a higher interest rate from a cause they support, he said.
“It was that smaller-level investor that kind of carried the weight of the investment, of the loan,” Neth said.
Gardner said the partners expect to close on the building in the coming weeks and take a short break before releasing conceptual drawings of the food hub and beginning a second round of fundraising to build out the retail shop, cold storage and commercial kitchen.
