Supporters Submit A Business Plan to Revive Greenhouse

A group of supporters of the National Cathedral greenhouse, which closed Thursday, have presented cathedral officials with a proposal to reopen it as a for-profit business with an educational-outreach component.

Saying they have fundraising commitments of between $80,000 and $100,000, supporters of the 58-year-old greenhouse said that reopening the facility as a business makes sense and that it has a built-in clientele of gardeners who have shopped there for years.

"Basically, we're making a very, very financially sound proposal," said Ann Scoffier, a local bank executive who is part of the ad hoc steering committee trying to save the facility.

The group offered its plan at a public meeting Thursday night between cathedral officials and neighbors, cathedral volunteers and greenhouse supporters.

Under the proposal, the cathedral would bring in an outside vendor to run the facility, and any donations raised would be used to fund botanical and ecological education programs, perhaps for local schools, Scoffier said.

On Friday, the cathedral's dean, the very Rev. Samuel Lloyd III, said that the cathedral will "consider carefully the avenues they are suggesting" and that he plans to discuss the proposal with the cathedral's governing boards. "We look forward to this period of exploration," he said in a statement.

At the meeting, Lloyd, along with John Shenefield, chairman of one of the cathedral's two governing bodies, and Andrew Hullinger, associate dean for administration and finance, fielded dozens of questions about the cathedral's recent cutbacks.

In May, the 100-year-old institution announced plans to lay off 33 people -- its first layoffs in decades -- and cut or suspend some popular programs in order to close a $3 million budget gap in the upcoming fiscal year.

"We trimmed every place that we could," Lloyd told the crowd.

But most of the questions Thursday night dealt with the greenhouse. The passionate reaction among local gardeners to its closing, cathedral officials acknowledged, caught them by surprise. More than 1,000 people signed an online petition asking the cathedral to keep the facility open. Almost 200 have offered money in order to do so.

"I've never seen energy like this," Scoffier told those at the meeting. "It's simply amazing."

Thor Halvorson, who lives near the cathedral, told officials that the greenhouse was the "key way" the cathedral interacts with the neighborhoods surrounding its campus, or Close, as it is called.

"It provides . . . a destination on the Close for locals, not just tourists," he said.

But officials were firm that the greenhouse would not be resurrected in its previous form.

"Running a plant store, we've decided, is not our mission," Lloyd said.

Cathedral spokesman Elizabeth Mullen said Friday that the cathedral has no plans for the space on which the greenhouse sits and has no plans to demolish it.

If it were to decide to demolish it, the cathedral would need the approval of the Historic Preservation Board, said Steve Calcott, a preservation planner in the D.C. Historic Preservation Office, because the cathedral is a National Historic Landmark.