It's spring and I'm blooming with ideas about Hillsdale.

 

Because I have so many blossoms, I'll do this in two editorial vases. For this issue's vase, I'll make an "arrangement" of cooperatives, credit unions and electric bikes.

 

A caution: some of these flowers are roses and come with thorns.

 

 * Start with the idea of cooperatives. We actually have one: Food Front, although you almost have to read the fine print to know that it is a cooperative. And you have to ask whether you must be a member to shop there. (Answer: You don't, but you get deals if you are.)

It's pretty clear to me that Food Front is struggling and searching for a way forward. In the next few days we'll learn whether Food Front management has signed a lease extension here. They aren't saying anything publicly yet, but let's assume they will be around a while. The Hillsdale Shopping Center would be in a world of hurt without an anchor grocery.

So here's my thinking.

Dump the name "Food Front." It has value in Northwest Portland where the Thurman Street mother store has been for 41 years.

In Hillsdale, "Food Front" has little meaning. It sounds like some kind of culinary conspiracy left over from the '70s. An alternative to the private chains, it is; a conspiracy it is not.

I'd give the store a name that up-front features three words: "Hillsdale," "Community" and "Cooperative."

I'd add the tag line: "Where you shop your values." In a not- too-subtle way, the appeal is to your conscience and what you believe in and value. In other words Hillsdale, Community, Cooperation.

Finally, Food Front's management might split its board and even make the Hillsdale Community Cooperative a separate organization governed by a Hillsdale board.

Next idea: move heaven and earth (mostly earth) to bring a still-very-interested  large, local credit union to Hillsdale. The proposed building, on the site once coveted by Chase Bank in 2011, still needs one or two more tenants to go with the credit union. We need to reach a tipping point - one that the property owner is still struggling to reach.

Which leads naturally to my final idea. Let's establish or attract an electric bicycle shop in one or both of the new building's spaces. Call it "The Red Electric Bike Shop" (after the iconic electric commuter train that served Hillsdale and other Oregon communities in the early part of the last century) Or how about the "Hills & Dales Electric Bicycle Shop"? What better market for electric bikes than the topography-challenged residents in the West Hills.

* If you combine the above ideas, you might consider an Electric Bicycle Cooperative. Northeast Portland has a successful bike coop. Then again, it might be simpler simply to woo a local franchise to open shop here. Or the Hillsdale Community Cooperative (formerly Food Front), might expand into the electric bike business, which would be financed by its friendly neighborhood credit union - which just happens to be a local financial cooperative and a nextdoor neighbor.

Good nutrition and bicycling, even voltaic-assisted bicycling, go together in "Hillsdale, in the the Healthy Heart of the West Hills."

Next issue: Capitol Highway reconsidered and forging a matching-fund Hillsdale Partnership for Hillsdale Main Street.

Last Saturday, I canvassed my neighbors to hand out earthquake preparedness packets (Thank you, City of Portland Office of Emergency Management, for sending me 20 copies so quickly).

I resisted sounding like a modern Paul Revere: "The earthquake is coming! The earthquake is coming!" Everyone I talked to seemed aware of that anyway.

I knocked on 10 doors first because I said - publicly - that I would and second, because it seemed like a good idea.

I also rather liked sharing the self-inspiring slogan, "No excuses. No regrets."

Of course I still have work to do. About half my neighbors were out somewhere on Saturday at mid-day.

And we need to set a date for a face-to-face organizational meeting. But the good news is that we've begun.

I've taken to heart those four words:

No excuses, no regrets.