Flower businesses with deep roots struggle

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Sep 4, 2007 | by Mary Anne OstromWriter

'PURPLE, burgundy, orange," Ron Gemignani repeated the gladiola order back to a customer phoning in early one morning.

The third-generation Peninsula flower grower, selling out of a stall at the San Francisco Flower Mart, was happy for the business - - especially since he recently learned that he may lose his spot at the mart.

A deal to sell nearly half of the 5-acre mart, once a vibrant center of the West Coast floral trade, is threatening the livelihood of several third- and fourth-generation family-owned businesses.

Global imports and real estate pressures, like the offer by an art and design college to turn Gemignani's stall and others into classrooms, probably means the end is near for a flower business started when his grandparents began growing in the decade after the 1906 earthquake.

The planned downsizing is the latest in a decades-long decline of the local cut-flower industry. Bay Area sprawl has pushed out all but the hardiest growers from Santa Rosa to Gilroy. Shipments of roses from Ecuador sell for the same price as locally grown ones, and they arrive with more pleasing heads, florists say. Flower lovers buy their bouquets while shopping for groceries.

Gemignani, 60, may try to share a stall in the

MARTIBusiness 2half of the market that will remain. But he sees the shrinking of the role of local growers all around him. A decade ago, he sold off all but 2 acres of the family farm in South San Francisco and since then advised his son to give up flowers for a trucking job.

"Our children are too smart to go into flowers," mused another purveyor walking by, shaking her head.

"As San Francisco has changed, the flower market has changed," said Patrick McCann, who runs flower and floral accessory shops at the mart.

But in many ways, the mart has not kept pace, McCann said.

"Over the years, people have lost touch with the flower mart. What we need is a marketing campaign to bring people down," he said, not "put 30 businesses on the street."

So far, his efforts have been rebuffed.

Instead, the shareholders, many belonging to families no longer in the flower business, plan to reinvest their estimated $15 million in proceeds from the proposed sale in more lucrative real estate.

To be sold would be the so-called "Italian" half of the market, reflecting the heritage of the families, many of them immigrants, who set up the cooperative more than 50 years ago alongside Japanese sellers.

Some flower professionals still do make dawn trips to the flower mart in search of unusual blooms.

"I like to go up to the market and snoop around and peek in to see what the newest thing is," said Poppie Rodriguez, senior designer at Mills Florist, a century-old Peninsula business still in the Mills family. During last week's trip, Rodriguez found velvety black dahlias and mini calla lilies "in all sorts of colors."

Many other Peninsula and South Bay florists and floral enthusiasts haven't made the trek for years. They prefer to have orders delivered directly by wholesalers or from growers in Salinas and the few remaining in Pescadero and Half Moon Bay.

The land on which the market has been located since the mid-'50s is in a once-dowdy part of town at Brannan and Sixth streets. But with the construction of AT&T Park, housing and retail a few blocks east, it has become more desirable.

After other deals fell through in recent years, a majority of the four dozen shareholders in the "Italian" cooperative voted late last month to sell its land to the Academy of Art University, a private school with several city locations.

"It's sad, but it's what's best for our shareholders," said Angelo Stagnaro Jr., president of the cooperative.

Stagnaro points out that many former local growers have become brokers for others' flowers. "Some of them are probably ready to go out of business anyway," he said. "There are too many competing with the same product."

But Robert Otsuka, general manager of the Japanese side of the market, said the market is adapting to changing business dynamics and stressed his market "isn't going anywhere."

Wholesalers -- particularly those who have niche markets, a stable of loyal customers and a steady supply of flowers from importers -- are doing fine, Otsuka said.

He added that while he hopes to accommodate some of the displaced vendors, "We are fully occupied."

Well-known rose specialists Sakai Bros., which sell from the Japanese side, gave up growing completely a few years ago and now sell Latin American roses on the wholesale market.

The real estate and global economic pressures are hardly exclusive to flower sellers or San Francisco. Urban flower markets around the country are under threat, said Amy Stewart, author of "Flower Confidential."

McCann has begun floating the idea of a face-lift for the market, akin to the Ferry Building's food-themed renovation -- but with a floral twist.

Stagnaro, whose own family left the flower business, is skeptical of McCann's plans. "Everything has to come to an end," he said.

Indeed, shortly after dawn on that recent Friday, flower sellers and their customers talked as if they were at a wake.