Gertens family makes 'long-term' investment in Forest Lake feed store

Aug. 1—When the owners of Gertens Greenhouses and Garden Center purchased Houle's Feed Store in Forest Lake last fall, many worried about the future of the feed store: Would customers still be able to buy almost every kind of feed imaginable, including for dogs, deer, horses, llamas, chickens, hogs, goats and turkeys?

"Yes," according to Gertens' Gino Pitera. "I think a lot of people assume that because Gertens purchased it, it's going to turn into a garden center. It's really going to be a feed store that has plants."

As part of a two-year, $800,000 makeover, buildings at Houle's will be renovated, insulated and made handicapped-accessible. "You won't look at it and say, 'Boy, this doesn't look like the Houle's store looked like,'" Pitera said. "It will just look like a buffed-up version of what is there now."

Construction crews are dismantling the northernmost building on the property, located on the southwest corner of Broadway Avenue and Highway 61. "It's truly coming down piece by piece," said Luke Allen, general manager of Spike's and Houle's feed stores. "The floor had a difference in height of almost a foot, it was so rotten underneath. We joke that it was put together with boulders and peanut butter."

A new building — matching the footprint of the building — will be built on site, and crews are saving as much of the wood as they can to reuse on the property. "We're very connected to the past and would like to preserve it as much as possible," Allen said. Crews found a metal sign underneath another sign on the side of the building and numbered every piece so that it could be installed again somewhere on site, he said.

The 1,000-square-foot building, which at different times has been used to store potatoes, pickles, salt and fertilizer, is the oldest building on the property. Houle's was built in 1916, and the building pre-dates that, Allen said.

E.J. Houle used to buy and sell potatoes out of the building and kept a potato sorter there. Later, pickles purchased from local farmers were stored in the building prior to being shipped to a processing plant in North Branch, according to Allen.

'UPGRADED VERSION' OF CURRENT LOOK

The rest of the buildings will be renovated and restored into a 7,000-square-foot feed/seed/pet supply/lawn and garden store. "It will look kind of like an upgraded version of what it looks like now," Pitera said. "We need to jack up those buildings, repair the foundations and get them so they work. We'll be adding things like bathrooms and running water."

Houle's will continue to sell food for gorillas, snakes, giraffes, monkeys, chinchillas and zebras; one of its biggest customers is the Como Zoo and Conservatory in St. Paul, Pitera said.

Instead of going to two separate buildings for purchase and pick-up, customers will be able to "do all their shopping and pick up all in one location," Pitera said. "You'll be able to see all the products that you might wish to purchase and not have to ask for them."

After the existing buildings are upgraded, Gertens officials plan to add a retail greenhouse and restore some of the buildings that would support that on the west side of the site; one area will be dedicated to selling nursery stock, he said.

A small section of the 3.5-acre site, on the southeast corner of Third Street and Broadway Avenue — 18/100ths of an acre — is owned by the city of Forest Lake. Gertens officials will be working with the city to obtain ownership of the land, Pitera said.

Other plans call for a small shed on the property to be moved to a new location.

"We bought the site because of what it was, not because we wanted to change it into something we think it should be," Pitera said. "The charm of the old buildings is what made it attractive, and that's what we're going to work hard on preserving. We're only going to add things that would enhance the historical presence of what those buildings were and try to get them so they can weather the next 100 years."

"We've been very happy with the Forest Lake site," he said. "The staff there is great, as are the people of that area."

TAKING A LONG-VIEW APPROACH

The five Houle siblings — brothers Jim, Gary, Jeff and Greg and sister Mary Koski — also sold Houle's Farm, Garden & Pet store on Minnesota 36 in Grant to Gertens. Gertens now owns six feed stores, including ones in Elk River, Delano, Loretto and Maple Plain.

In 2014, Gertens purchased a 52-acre growing site in Lake Elmo that belonged to Linder's Greenhouses. The company in 2013 bought 80 acres from Buell's Landscape and Design Center on Manning Avenue in Denmark Township; Pitera said they have since added to that site with the purchase of an 80-acre farm and a 20-acre farm.

"You can't instantly come up with additional space for expanding the amount of nursery stock that you grow without having the land to do it," he said. "You know that somewhere down the road, you're going to need it, so if you have the opportunity to buy one of those farms, you need to do so."

The purchases are all part of Gertens officials' planning "for the next generation of family" who are getting involved in the business, Pitera said.

"We take a long-view approach on this stuff," he said. "If it takes us two years to renovate a property, in the long-term view of things, that's not a big deal. If we purchase farmland knowing that at some point we may need to grow nursery stock on it, but that day might not be until 5 or 10 years out, well, we just know that we want the family business to continue. Five or 10 years comes faster than you think."

Family-owned businesses have different time horizons from those "looking to make next quarter's shareholders' report," Pitera said. "We're just a little bit different, and we like it that way. I don't think many people would buy an old operation like Houle's Forest Lake and say, 'Instead of tearing it down and putting up a gas station or a hotel or a restaurant, let's fix it up and make it a nicer feed store. The short-term money would have been, 'Let's just tear it down and make it a new Kwik Trip or SuperAmerica or Holiday. The long-term thing is, 'You know this is a nice business, and how do you preserve these iconic buildings?'"