Woodinville Heartbreak

Every time Mark Langan returned to his hometown of Woodinville, Washington, his first stop was not his mother’s house — it was Molbak’s Garden + Home.

That’s because Molbak’s is central to Langan’s history. He started working at the Seattle-area garden center in the 1980s as a 17-year-old box boy and worked his way up to an assistant grower over his 10-year career there. He met his wife there. It’s where they had their wedding reception.

The importance of Molbak’s to Langan’s life experience can’t be understated, but his story isn’t necessarily unique. For many of its 13,000 residents, Molbak’s is Woodinville, and Woodinville is Molbak’s.

The institution permanently closed its doors in January 2024, nearly 70 years after Danish immigrants Egon and Laina Molbak bought the business. The community devastation is far-reaching.

It also came as a terrible surprise. A new Molbak’s was supposed to be the centerpiece of The Gardens District, a “city in a garden” that would also include housing, retail, restaurants and other amenities, according to the IGC.

But the project collapsed after a lengthy conflict with Green Partners, the IGC’s landlord and the developer of The Gardens District, ending in an unsuccessful — and confidential — mediation with “no financially viable options” for Molbak’s to stay open.

“It was a gut punch. It was just a gut punch,” says Langan, choking up as he recalls hearing the news of Molbak’s closure. “I mean, Molbak’s is the heart and soul of downtown Woodinville, and that heart got ripped out.”

‘The heart and soul of downtown Woodinville’

Woodinville is a half-hour northeast of Seattle in the Sammamish River Valley. The area that would become Woodinville was occupied by Indigenous people for thousands of years, with white settlers moving into the area in the early 1870s. Woodinville was named for the Woodin family, which built a 160-acre homestead in the area that became a center for the new settlement, hosting a hotel, general store and post office.

Apropos to the coincidental name of the homesteaders, logging was the principal industry, and the river was the primary means of transportation. Over the decades, agricultural production grew, aided by a railway.

Egon and Laina Molbak immigrated to the U.S. from Denmark in 1950 and settled in Seattle. They purchased a small greenhouse and nursery business in 1956 that became Molbak’s.

The business operated as a wholesale grower until 1967, when it added a small seasonal retail shop. Laina, who died in 2018, encouraged visitors and grew the retail operation. Retail eventually became the main business operating in a 138,000-square-foot building on 19 acres in Woodinville’s Central Business District. Around 1986, Molbak’s bought a 40-acre production facility three miles from its retail operation.

That’s when Karen Langan started working at Molbak’s. An Ohio native, she was working at a landscape company and attended OFA Short Course (now known as Cultivate), where she learned about the IGC. It drew her out west.

At the time, Mark Langan was in Europe, sponsored by the company to study in Germany. When he came back in 1987, he was Karen’s boss. And she wasn’t looking for a relationship. But plants weren’t the only thing the pair was growing at Molbak’s. There was also a sprout of love. The pair started dating and got married in 1990.

“It’s basically the birthplace of our relationship,” Karen says.

The couple moved back to Ohio to be closer to her family, and they started their own greenhouse, Mulberry Creek Herb Farm, in Huron Township, Ohio, halfway between Cleveland and Toledo along the shores of Lake Erie.

Karen calls the three years she worked there “the golden time of Molbak’s.” She was in the foliage department, and as the youngest employee at 23, she had several “aunts and moms” who became her chosen family, including the community-beloved Sayo Harmeling, who retired in 2001 at age 85. (She died in 2007.)

The business was a plant wonderland that inspired a love of horticulture among its employees, who gathered outside of work, sharing meals and attending concerts. Egon Molbak and later president and general manager Jerry Wilmot would hand-deliver paychecks to employees and have five-minute check-in chats with them. Wilmot loaned Karen his tent during a six-week bicycling fundraiser.

“I know some places say family atmosphere,” Karen says. “They actually did have a family atmosphere there.”

The Gardens District

Over the years, Woodinville grew up around Molbak’s — and many say Molbak’s, which is located at the center of the town, was the driver of that growth.

“Woodinville was this one-lane road with two gas stations and three strip bars. I’m not kidding,” Mark Langan says. “[Molbak’s] was the lifestyle draw that brought out the developers and the other businesses to see this could be a classy town, so it was that seed…[Now] it is just a wonderful high-class, high-income area, and I would give Molbak’s themselves the credit for that.”

Today, Woodinville has roughly 130 wineries and tasting rooms, spearheaded by Chateau Ste. Michelle, Washington state’s oldest winery, and Columbia Winery.

“The town grew up around us,” explains Julie Kouhia, CEO of Molbak’s since 2015 and chief operating officer before that since 2006. “So suddenly, we find ourselves in the middle of the town, a small town, and sitting on 19 acres, which means that we were right in the center, which was fabulous, but we also were blocking through streets — where there would normally be streets, there was Molbak’s.” (Kouhia is also on Garden Center magazine’s advisory board.)

Egon and Laina’s son, Jens Molbak — who founded the loose change kiosk company Coinstar in 1991 — purchased Molbak’s from his parents in 2001. The development firm Green Partners purchased the 19-acre property where the garden center is located from the Molbak family in 2008.

According to Washington state business records, Green Partners, LLC, based in Seattle, is governed by Mount Tolt Holdings, LLC, based in Kirkland, Washington, which is governed by Michael Larson. Larson is chief investment officer at Cascade Asset Management Company, the investment office for Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust.

Kouhia says that Jens Molbak is a “small, silent minority partner of Green Partners.” And Jens clearly understood how his family business was both the center of a burgeoning community and a possible roadblock to its growth.

About a decade ago, Jens Molbak approached Nancy Rottle, director of the University of Washington’s Green Futures Research and Design Lab, with a goal of understanding the needs of the Woodinville community and creating a vision for a new walkable, sustainable town center.

The Green Futures Lab facilitated a visioning process for the future of a site in the center of Woodinville, which included Molbak’s, called “Woodinville Vision 2035.”

The report from the project, which was meant to create a vision for what the property could be, states that Molbak’s “provides the possibility for a new locus of urban growth and civic identity,” adding that “the current use as a single-purpose garden center does not fulfill the site’s economic or civic potential.”

At the time, the physical infrastructure of the store was aging, and significant reinvestment would be needed for the future. But Molbak’s wanted to do more than just improve itself — it wanted to invest in improving the whole community.

“This was not just about a new Molbak’s garden center, but it was really about making this really great new town center in a very fast-growing region of the county — rural but becoming very urban,” Rottle says.

The project went on for years and included input and discussion from the business community, the city and residents with a focus on a sustainable community with green connections and outdoor spaces — not just “another cookie-cutter suburban downtown,” Kouhia says.

“At the end, we had this great vision for what it would look like to have a city in a garden,” she adds.

From there, Molbak’s moved forward with requests for qualifications and proposals for a five-phase project, with Molbak’s included in the first phase. And things seemed to be moving well. In June 2023, Woodinville City Council voted 5-2 to approve a development agreement for The Gardens District that required Green Partners to include Molbak’s in the initial phase.

But things went off the rails that fall — and both sides blame the other for the collapse.

Molbak’s said it was informed in November by Green Partners that Molbak’s would no longer be part of the project, and the agreement to include Molbak’s in The Gardens District was terminated.

“We were trying to figure out what had gone wrong, and we still don’t have a complete answer on what happened,” Kouhia says.

That month, Green Partners also released a statement saying it was surprised by Molbak’s announcement “given that we have no plans to remove Molbak’s Garden + Home from its current location.”

The LLC said the Gardens District project was no longer moving forward but that it was still negotiating with Jens Molbak in an effort to include his family’s business as a “key feature of a possible future Gardens District.”

Green Partners further said that it was Molbak who upended the discussions despite alleged offers of concessions from Cascade (the asset management company connected to Green Partners), including free rent.

It further alleged that it had allowed Molbak’s to operate either rent-free or with significantly below-market rent for years and still had years remaining on its lease.

“What I can say is that we were given some relief during COVID for a couple years, as I think many retailers were by their landlords or their partners,” Kouhia says. “I would say that free rent is inaccurate, and for years I think is inaccurate. But I can’t really say a lot more than that.”

The following month, Green Partners said it wasn’t moving forward with the Gardens District project for several reasons, “including the economic uncertainty brought on by higher interest rates and rising construction costs along with the complexity of creating a large-format garden center in a dense urban development.” It also voiced its hope to resume development of the land “when conditions allow.”

A spokesperson for Green Partners declined to comment for this article, referring to the previously released statements.

Kouhia has declined to discuss details of the existing lease, citing confidential legal agreements, but says, “It is financially and operationally absolutely unsustainable even in the short term.”

Kouhia notes that after the closure announcement, landowners across the Northwest reached out to say they had land available for a new Molbak’s. “That’s a process,” she says. “You have to get the land, get the permitting, build the store, all of that. And so there was no way, in the timeline that we had, to transition from one to another. And we had to think long and hard about going way out where land is affordable and build a huge format retail garden center again.”

Kouhia did say that Molbak’s still believes strongly in the city-in-a-garden vision and would definitely consider pursuing the vision if another community were to offer the interest and opportunity.

In a statement, the Molbak family — founder Egon Molbak, owner Jens Molbak, Ellen Molbak Welsch, Kirsten Molbak Paterson and Heidi Molbak — offered a note of grim finality. “The Gardens District was an exciting plan for our future and our opportunity to remain in Woodinville for decades to come. A new Molbak’s was supposed to be the heart of the project. To not be able to realize that vision is heartbreaking to us.”

What’s next for Molbak’s?

Molbak’s had 70 full-time employees and 45 part-time and seasonal employees.

Within days of deciding to close, an all-hands meeting was held to break the news to staff, and Molbak’s delayed its opening by an hour to give employees time to process.

The business also brought in representatives from the state to discuss filing unemployment, creating resumes and job hunting, and six local employers hosted an on-site job fair.

Kouhia made it a priority to communicate with both staff and the public about what was happening, through letters, press releases and emails. She noted one especially difficult point was customers who were upset the business was not refunding gift cards.

Molbak’s began a 20% off closing sale Jan. 5. Kouhia says the community response was overwhelming. “It looked like…it was Mother’s Day weekend and we had said everything was 90% off,” she says.

The IGC officially closed its doors Jan. 28. The last day of work for about 90% of employees was Jan. 31. Due to a still-strong financial position, the business was able to offer severance and pay out all accrued vacation to all employees. February was spent closing the books.

Molbak’s Garden Cafe by Alexa’s is continuing to operate daily, and Molbak’s director of landscape design and build opened a new business.

Jens Molbak still owns the business and its buildings. Green Partners still owns the land. But Molbak’s isn’t sure what its obligations, like maintenance, are for the property, or even what will happen to it, so it’s not clear what lies ahead for Molbak’s.

“We’re in this position where the brand still has a lot of relevance and meaning,” Kouhia says. “I don’t know what we’ll do going forward. I just, I don’t know if there is a forward to go with...We are still completely committed to our purpose of gardens and connection and community and sustainability.”

Although Rottle, from the University of Washington, hasn’t been involved in the project in recent years, she’s still disappointed by the outcome — and she’s hopeful that there’s more to come for Molbak’s, even if it’s just inspiring other garden centers to develop into the heart of their communities.

“It has the potential of putting gardening and plants more at the center of people’s lives instead of just these kind of suburban showcases,” Rottle says. “It’s unfortunate that this model isn’t moving forward to show the rest of the country the contributions that garden centers can make towards the identity and livability of their communities, the civic pride.”

Kouhia doesn’t want Molbak’s to be a cautionary tale. Every community is different, and the plan for Woodinville is not necessarily the plan for every community, but garden centers should still be creative in figuring out their places in their communities and pursue that creativity about their roles there.

“We stand by the thinking, the planning, the work, the vision, the purpose, all of those things that were going to be happening in this new development,” she says. “This was a terrible, terrible result and nothing we could have ever envisioned. But I still think it was the right thing. And I think it was the right thing for the community. I think it was the right thing for our business. I think it’s the right thing for the industry to kind of figure out how do we reinvent ourselves to remain relevant and close to the customers and what does that look like and how do we continue to inspire.”

For Mark Langan, he makes sure to implement the principles he learned at Molbak’s in his greenhouse every day: Treating employees as family, sharing information with others in the industry and, above all, instilling a love of and inspiration for horticulture and plants.

“That’s one thing I think we uniquely do that other businesses do not do…I think that makes us really a unique industry,” he says. “I like to encourage everybody to continue doing that and know that that’s what makes things great.”

Emily Mills is associate editor of Garden Center magazine. Contact her at emills@gie.net.