Dan Schantz Greenhouse is up for sale on Lehigh Street in Allentown
A prominent Lehigh Valley plant and gardening center is up for sale.
The Dan Schantz Greenhouse & Cut Flower Outlet in southwest Allentown is on the market with an asking price of $3.1 million, according to real estate company Berkshire Hathaway Homeservices Fox & Roach Realtors.
An employee who answered the phone Thursday said the business will remain open for the time being and is getting ready for poinsettia season.
The complex at 2031 SW 29th St. includes glass greenhouses that are 9,000 and 15,000 square feet on either side of the main retail building, which is more than 5,200 square feet. The property has 69 lined parking spaces and two loading docks at the rear.
The parcel is 2.1 acres and sits behind a Turkey Hill convenience store near the intersection of Lehigh Street and Interstate 78.
According to Fox & Roach, that makes the property very attractive, saying it has “excellent proximity” to the rest of the Lehigh Valley,
Philadelphia and New York.
The Schantz business dates to 1957, when Dan bought a family farm in Lower Milford and opened a roadside stand.
Schantz opened the Allentown location in 2002 after spending 15 years operating a small store in Emmaus. He previously had retail businesses at Easton Avenue in Bethlehem, Union Boulevard in Allentown and Lehigh Street in Emmaus, but sold them after facing quadruple heart bypass surgery.
The wholesale part of the business — Dan Schantz Farm & Greenhouses — in Upper Milford Township was not included in the listing. According to the company website, it is the 32nd largest wholesale greenhouse grower in the country and operates 1.8 million square feet of environmentally controlled growing space and 10 acres of outside growing space.
According to the website, the company is run by an ownership team “with over 250 years of collective greenhouse operations and farming experience” that offers a “continuum of the founding principles of Dan & Mildred Schantz’s commitment to quality, fairness, honesty and delivering an outstanding delivery experience to all of our customers.”