I wish we had a co-op around here. In Kokomo you pretty much got two options as far as bikes go, you got Walmart, K-mart, box store bikes and you got two bike shops Schwinn Cycle and Victory bike shop that only sell $300+ bikes. If you get really lucky you can sometimes find them at the second hand stores or flea markets but 9 times out of 10 they are over priced or DOA.
Where I'm at, we've had a successful co-op over the Bridge in Phila since before I was very much aware of bikes, beyond riding my bmx bike all over town as my main means of transportation. A few years back, a nearby town (2 towns over; I used to have a job over there...) kinda got gentrified and neo-uppity, so of course they had to start a co-op. At the time, I shared a cheap 2 bedroom with a somewhat crazy roommate, and we had an extremely small-scale "co-op" operation going on in our basement. It was strictly trash-picked bikes, mostly 70s step-thru lightweights, mostly trashpicked in the boojee town of Haddonfield, where I currently reside, so they were all decent quality bikeshop bikes, that were neglected for decades before being trashed. We'd piece'm together and give'm away, mostly to the female international exchange students that my roomie was forever schemin' on. Usually they'd need new tires, and that was kind of the easy first date, where this kid I lived with would be like "Here's your bike...it just needs tires; after class tomorrow, I'll go with you to the bike shop to get a set...."
I built a singlespeed Schwinn World Sport for my girlfriend in those days (she's my wife, now) but she barely ever rode it....
So, yeah, it seemed awesome that there was gonna be a real co-op around, but that co-op started out small, been thru some changes, and it's pretty awesome right now. We just started this new county-wide co-op recently, and it's a shame b/c at this point, we have more volunteer wrenches than we have folks who need bikes! Well, I guess that ain't true b/c a lot of bikes have been distributed, but that's what a typical night at the bikeshare looks like: a bunch of guys wrenching on battered bikes, some donated but most received en masse from local police forces.... some still have "Evidence" tags on them. There are satellite distribution centers in a couple other towns, with more springing up all the time, and for instance we need to finish another 20 bikes for the new Gloucester BikeShare by June 1. So, yeah, I think it'll grow quick if we do it right, and even if it never gets better, I'll take it over WallyWorld bikes any day of the week.
Dang, I hijacked this thread, but I guess a good local co-op is kinda like the natural predator of the small-scale local bike flipper.