A Napa plant nursery won the right to move this summer after surviving a neighbor’s attempt to block the relocation. But its victory will apparently be short-lived.
DJ’s Growing Place, which has operated for nearly a quarter century, will stage a close-out sale starting Tuesday, according to co-owner Debbie Gore. The nursery will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, except on Sundays, until all plants are sold.
The decision to wind down the nursery comes barely two months after she and her husband, Curt, fended off a homeowner’s appeal against their move to an acre-and-a-half plot at Trancas Street and Big Ranch Road – a delay the couple says cost them the most profitable spring months of the growing season and left them without the funds to continue.
The loss of time and visibility for DJ’s, which had operated from Big Ranch Road north of the city since the early 1990s, was too much to overcome, Debbie Gore conceded.
“Unfortunately, we’re in a very seasonal business,” she said Wednesday of the nursery, which cut back its hours in early August. “You’re open year-round but you make the bulk of your sales in spring, and with all the delays in going through the appeal, we didn’t get the go-ahead until almost July.
“Our (growing) season starts at the end of March and goes to June, so we basically lost our sales for the year. Coupled with the fact we’re not allowed to put signs on the property on Big Ranch Road to instruct people that our entrance is on Trancas, nobody can find us.”
DJ’s, which raises and sells potted flowers, herbs and vegetables, won the city Planning Commission’s approval in May to move to 708 Trancas St. from its longtime home on Big Ranch Road north of the city. But a neighboring homeowner, Michael Imfeld, objected to the arrival of his new neighbor, alleging the plant-growing operation violated the spirit of the site’s residential zoning and created excessive noise and nuisances during months of ground preparation. (Zoning terms for the site allow “limited other uses,” including agricultural cultivation, with a permit.)
Imfeld’s appeal sent the dispute to the City Council, which in June voted to let the Gores reopen their nursery at Trancas and Big Ranch. Despite Imfeld sending city officials a thick sheaf of documents and photos alleging various code violations, no council members took his side, with Vice Mayor Mary Luros describing the appeal as “general NIMBY-ism” and “completely irrelevant” to city land-use law.
The city’s approval of DJ’s new home, however, proved no panacea for the business. The Gores were given only a two-year permit to grow plants, with the option of a third year, on a residential site Napa planners say will eventually be zoned for as many as 10 homes.
A division of the property into residential and commercial zones also required customers to enter only from Trancas Street, then continue to the back of a parking lot before reaching the nursery. A movable kiosk in the parking lot hosts purchases, and shade structures to protect plants must be easily taken down and removed.
“The problem was that the space was zoned for homes and was not appropriate for a nursery,” Imfeld said last week. “If they had gone to the city (first) and found out what the conditions for moving it on their use permit would be, they probably never would have moved in the first place.”
After selling their remaining plants, the owners of DJ’s may sell their Napa home and head for Placerville, a move Debbie Gore said is made necessary by the abrupt end to their business.
“It’s sad. After 24 years, what’s really sad is that Napa boasts of wanting small businesses in the community, and what could be more perfect than to have a small nursery surviving?” she said. “What happened shouldn’t have happened. The fact that you can put up eight houses here, or a day care center, or a church – it’s ridiculous that those things are allowed while we have to go through months and months of permits.”
Because DJ’s nursery was a tenant rather than the landowner, the use permit will not end with the Gores’ departure — although it was unclear who, if anyone, would run a plant-growing operation with a limited operating permit, according to Rick Tooker, Napa’s community development director.
Despite the nursery’s impending closure, Imfeld, who battled its arrival, suggested he too may leave the neighborhood and move elsewhere in town in the coming years. A widening of Big Ranch Road planned by the city would bring its shoulder “20 feet closer to my front door, which is not a positive for us,” he said.
