Bid made on Boston Flower Exchange

From the Boston Globe: 

Now, the century-old wholesale supplier could fall to the wave of gentrification coursing through the neighborhood. A mysterious bidder has offered $35 million for the private company’s five-acre property, leaving vendors who have hawked flowers from inside the Albany Street warehouse for decades worried about being uprooted.

“We are now at a crossroads,” the Flower Exchange’s board of directors said in a letter to its shareholders disclosing the purchase offer. “The Exchange continues to be an important and historical part of the flower business in New England. It is currently a profitable business . . . . However, we observe that Albany Street is undergoing a real estate boom.”

The exchange is a vestige of an earlier era in Boston commerce. It was founded in 1909 by a collective of 123 growers who wanted a single location from which to sell their flowers to retailers — one of its earliest locations was in the basement of the Park Street Church. Though its power has been diminished by competition, the exchange remains an important supplier to the region, a convenient stop for florists and retail shops to stock up on everything from asters to zinnias.

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