Flower Farm evicted for a gas station after 36 years in Kennewick
Tri-Cities Flower Farm is scrambling to sell thousands of trees, flowers and houseplants after being evicted from its longtime home near Columbia Center to make way for a gas station.
“Kennewick needs another gas station,” said owner Tom Kay, who is unapologetically salty about losing his lease.
“It’s an eviction,” Kay said.
Kay has not ruled out a new venture, but said he’s focused on clearing out inventory both at the retail site and the actual farm that supplies the greenery it sells before May 30.
“We are really under the gun,” he said.
While he’s treating it as a total liquidation, he didn’t rule out reestablishing the business in some other form.
“There’s many, many different opportunities,” he said.
Kay and his family established the Tri-Cities Flower Farm 40 years ago, first in Pasco. They added a Kennewick location 36 years ago on a corner of a 6-are site at 311 S. Columbia Center Blvd., near West Clearwater.
Flower Farm leased its lot because it couldn’t afford a 20% down payment on land valued at $1.1 million at the time, Kay said.
Workers on horseback
Kay said the intersection, now among the region’s busiest, was quieter in the early days, before the orchards of western Kennewick gave way to subdivisions.
The subdivisions may have brought color, but the bucolic surroundings had their own charm.
Orchard workers rode horses to a nearby 7-Eleven, he remembered.
“We’ve had a lot of fun,” Kay said.
The Pasco location closed around 2008, a casualty of Great Recession.
The Kennewick Flower Farm continued, though it was increasingly hemmed in by development.
Fred’s Appliance bought the southern portion of the property and built a showroom.
In 2018, Goodwill Industries of the Columbia Inc. purchased the balance of the property for its own store and donation center. Flower Farm continued on the northern portion of the property, which it leased.
The Flower Farm property was marketed for redevelopment, and developers answered the call.
Gas station, drive-thru
In December, the city of Kennewick received an application from a development team seeking permits to build a gas station, including a 7,500-square-foot building with convenience store, drive-thru food service, two additional tenant spaces and a canopy to cover five fuel pumps.
A 40,000-gallon underground storage tank will support the pumps. The building application is pending.
The development team includes the developers, Sandeep and Sunanda Joshi, and LCR Construction LLC, according to Kennewick building records.
Horticulture studies
Kay, who grew up in a farming family, grew enamored of the plant business and greenhouses while studying horticulture at Colorado State University.
He spent a month working on maintenance in a research facility and loved the environment.
He moved to Washington when he married his wife, a Tri-Citian..
Kay said the community can support The Flower Farm by purchasing trees, flowers, houseplants and other items in the final weeks of business.
