Malmborg’s selling Brooklyn Center garden store

A fixture in Brooklyn Center for decades will soon be closing its doors at that location. The owners of Malmborg's Garden Center and Greenhouses are selling the property to make way for a new charter school.
While Malmborg's other stores and nurseries in Rogers and Blaine will stay open, the decision to sell the Brooklyn Center land is the end of a long era for three acres of greenhouses on Lilac Drive.
Owner Troy Lucht says the property has been in the plant-growing business for more than 100 years.
"Some of the greenhouses here are the original houses," Lucht said. "Some of the pipes come from the original structures that come from the early 1900s."
Lucht's father worked here for many years and then bought the business in the 1970s. It was well known for specializing in geraniums, so for Lucht, closing this location is sentimental.
"For a lot of people they grew up shopping at this store, coming here with their parents as a child," Lucht said. "So there's a certain nostalgia to coming here."
Lucht says they weren't looking to sell, but the right offer came from a charter school that has a focus on the Hmong community.
"They came along and we thought it was kind of a good mix for the city as well as the community and it makes sense for us in our term strategic plans."
New Millennium Academy is currently located in north Minneapolis. With 500 students, school officials say they were looking for a place to grow.
"The greenhouses may be replaced with classrooms, but the ideals of nurturing, cultivating and growth will continue to take place on one of the city's most iconic land parcels, " wrote Mike Vang, New Millennium's director of operations, in an e-mail to 12 News.
Vang says the school did an extensive search for the right location. They hope to open the new school in fall of 2016.
Mike Johnson, reporting
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