Blaze Hits 100-Year-Old Minnesota Nursery

July 10, 2005
Fire destroyed a historic storage building at Bailey Nurseries in Newport on Friday night, sending flames high into the air that were visible for more than a mile.

Fire destroyed a historic storage building at Bailey Nurseries in Newport on Friday night, sending flames high into the air that were visible for more than a mile.

No one was injured in the blaze, which broke out about 8 p.m. at the 1,500-acre nursery, the largest in the state and one of the largest in the nation. The cause of the fire was not immediately determined.

Early reports indicated the fire did not reach the main offices of the nursery, which are located in a 100-year-old farmhouse across a parking lot from the storage building. The fire still was raging late Friday as firefighters from a number of nearby cities battled the blaze.

Newport resident Tom Johnson said flames were shooting higher than nearby trees and could be seen from about a mile away.

"Whatever is burning up there, it's burning good," he said, after having driven near the fire scene Friday night.

The nursery was founded in 1905 on a 15-acre farm by John Vincent Bailey and his wife, Elizabeth. Terri McEnaney, a great-granddaughter of Bailey, is now president of the company.

Bailey Nurseries is celebrating its 100th year this year and developed a Centennial rose to honor the Minnesota Capitol, also celebrating its 100th birthday.

The nursery, which is a wholesale business, sells to more than 5,000 companies in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Southeast Asia.

The Bailey family business is an institution in the nursery business. It has even served as a case study for classes at the University of Minnesota and the University of St. Thomas + because of its long-term successes in horticultural marketing and plant breeding, and because it presents some classic challenges of family business ownership.

The storage building housed marketing materials and also a new printing company recently started by the nursery, said Bailey spokeswoman Peggy Anne Montgomery. The company's catalogue has about 1,000 pages and costs $15 each. Thousands of the catalogues were in the old building, Montgomery said.

"We have everything ready to go to 30 trade shows this summer," she said. "That's been destroyed."

The storage building was the first cold storage facility for any nursery in the world and was used to keep bare root plants at a proper temperature from the time they were dug in the fall until they were shipped out to customers in the spring, Montgomery said. The building keeps the plants at 34 degrees all winter long.

The building still was used to store roses and some evergreens, Montgomery said, but has been mostly replaced by a new cold storage facility that is the largest in the world and is 11 football fields long.

There were no plants in the old building at the time of the fire, Montgomery said. Business at the nursery, located at Bailey and Military roads, is expected to continue.

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