Geiger’s to Remain Rooted in Westport

By James Lomuscio

Geiger’s Garden Center will remain in Westport, abandoning plans announced last July to sell the 2.5-acre Post Road East property to a prospective buyer for residential and commercial use.
Geiger’s Garden Center at 1135 Post Road East abandoned plans to become a mixed use commercial and residential development. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Dave Matlow for WestportNow.com

The reasons John Geiger gave Monday for the 57-year-old business staying put are pleas from customers plus the fact sales doubled in 2011.

He did not mention a number of negative reactions to the preliminary plans, including from a now-elected member of the Planning and Zoning Commission.

“Believe it or not, but we doubled our sales this year, and that’s pretty remarkable in this economy,” said Geiger, whose father Frank Geiger started and heads the business at 1135 Post Road East.

“And a number of clients asked us to stay in this location,” he said. “They said that when they saw the article that we were leaving, they wanted us to stay.”

He said that the family-operated business run by three generations of Geigers, including 21-year-old John Geiger Jr., had been looking for years for larger space but “couldn’t find one that was adequate.”

He said that the company does 50 percent of its product and landscaping business in Westport, Weston and Fairfield, even having a branch store on the Post Road in Fairfield. 

An equal amount of business is done in Darien, Greenwich and Westchester, he said. Instead of moving, Geiger said, his family is looking to open up another branch location in Greenwich.

Business this past year was so good, Geiger said, that the company added 15 new employees, “and we need to add another 10 to 15 people to our garden center and landscaping business.”

“And we have people working here with four-year college degrees in horticulture, landscape architecture and agronomy,” he said.

He added that he hopes to grow the business “by another 25 to 35 percent this year.”

With such bullish projections it is no surprise Geiger has no intention of selling.

“It’s one of the last remaining horticultural, gardening and landscape centers as opposed to the big box stores,” he said.

In early July, Lawrence P. Weisman, the attorney representing the undisclosed buyer under contract for the Geiger’s site —opposite Green’s Farms Elementary School and the Post Road East shopping center anchored by Barnes & Noble—presented a pre-application review to the Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z).

It called for a mixed use commercial and residential development with 10 two-bedroom apartments, three of which would be leased or sold as below-market rate or “affordable.”

At the time, Laurence Bradley, director of the Planning and Zoning Department, described the presentation as “a first” under the new regulation.

On Monday Geiger described that presentation to the P&Z as “very preliminary,” stressing that those plans have now been abandoned.

When the plan was discussed, among those voicing opposition was Chip Stephens, one of four Republicans elected in November to the P&Z.

In a comment posted on WestportNow, Stephens said: “This is not affordable housing, it is once again developers, speculators and lawyers abusing a well meaning law to change the nature of our town by overbuilding and destroying open space. ” (See WestportNow July 18, 2011)