NEW YORK – The celebrated Park Avenue neighborhood has a small business to thank for bringing holiday cheer to its streets 12 months after 12 months.
City-Scape Landscaping, a family-run operation based in Queens, installs 120 fir trees shipped from Nova Scotia, Canada, along the avenue for nearly 50 blocks, from forty ninth to 97th streets.
The business has maintained the avenue’s grassy medians – often known as the Park Avenue Malls – for 50 years. A crew of six to seven City-Scape employees positions the fir trees. The corporate brings in greater than $1 million in annual sales from all its clients, based on Experian Business Data. The fir tree process accounts for near $100,000 of that a 12 months.
Park Avenue has been a key a part of the corporate’s business since 1972, City-Scape’s owners said, helping pay salaries and keep families fed.
City-Scape Landscaping began when late owner Vincent Sofield’s older brothers, Joe and Duke Sofield, were hired by their neighbor Peter Van de Wetering — “the unrivaled tulip impresario of Park Avenue” — to assist his team plant and maintain the shops, Vincent said.
Christmas tress installed by City-Scape Landscaping on Park Avenue in Recent York.
CNBC
Shortly thereafter, Van de Wetering moved to Long Island to begin Van de Wetering Greenhouses, which continues to maintain the avenue lush with tulips and seasonal flora. He passed off mall maintenance permanently to the Sofields, and City-Scape was in business.
“I do not think Park Avenue would have quite the identical glamour if the median partitions weren’t in place,” said Vincent Sofield’s son, Dylan. “I believe it really creates an excellent contrast with the concrete jungle — form of softens your eyes up a bit of bit, makes it less aggressive.”
A half-century later, City-Scape is keeping the business within the family. After becoming a co-owner earlier this 12 months, 26-year-old Dylan is taking up the operation within the wake of his father’s recent passing.
“Numerous people don’t think me after I tell them I own the corporate,” he told CNBC earlier this 12 months. “They ask for the boss, and I say, ‘You are looking at him.’ But they quickly lose that when they realize I do know what I’m talking about.”
Sofield said he has played a job within the business since he was young, not because he needed to, but because he “all the time desired to be involved.”
“I used to be probably pulling a rake before I could walk,” he joked.
Despite the avenue’s high profile, Sofield said he has felt unphased by it since it is “all he knew” growing up. But as he has gotten older, he now recognizes that Park Avenue will not be just any landscaping job.
“It’s definitely something to be pleased with,” Sofield said. “I see my work far and wide, TV, Instagram. I can be scrolling and think, ‘Oh, there’s my tulips,’ or ‘There’s my lawn.'”
Dylan Sofield, owner of City-Scape Landscaping.
CNBC
For many of the 12 months, City-Scape tends to the shops every Monday ahead of high traffic weekdays. Crews weed, mow the lawns and hedges, remove debris, water the plants and repair damaged wood barriers.
The corporate is hired by the Fund for Park Avenue — the neighborhood nonprofit chargeable for the shops — to take care of the green spaces year-round.
The department stores change by the season: tulips within the spring, begonias in the summertime, chrysanthemums in the autumn and temporary fir trees within the winter.
“It’s people’s front yard, front gardens along Park Avenue,” said the group’s president, Barbara McLaughlin. “So everyone who’s lucky enough to continue to exist Park Avenue really enjoys it on daily basis, but additionally, it’s an exquisite place to walk and it’s enjoyed by loads of people.”
The trees are lit up on the annual Park Avenue tree lighting at Brick Presbyterian Church, an event that drew 4,000 people this 12 months, a church spokesperson said.
Christmas tress installed by City-Scape Landscaping on Park Avenue in Recent York.
CNBC
“It’s such an intimate event for Recent York City,” McLaughlin said. “It is a neighborhood event, neighborhood feel, but all are welcome.”
The trees can be taken down in mid-January.
“We might like to have them stay longer, but they are not planted,” McLaughlin said. “These trees are installed temporarily, so that they do get dry.”
And because the trees mark the changing of seasons, additionally they mark a season of change for City-Scape. It was Dylan Sofield’s first holiday tree installation running the business without his father.
“I still have the assistance of my family,” he said. “My uncle remains to be around, and he’s been doing this for 50 years; he is not going anywhere.”
