By Mark W. Olson

Chaska Farm & Garden is preparing to move – but not far.

The business learned earlier this month that it would need to move by Dec. 1 to make room for soil excavation, according to owner Tom Hayden.

Farm & Garden sits on the northwest corner of Highway 41 and County Road 61 – the last of three businesses that once occupied the site. However the city, which is redeveloping the block, needs Farm & Garden to move now so it can continue with an environmental cleanup.

The city received a $900,000 grant to clean up the site, much of which is already done. The work needs to be completed by the end of the year, according to City Administrator Matt Podhradsky.

Hayden said he was told Farm & Garden could be at the location through next summer. Podhradsky said the end-of-the-year timeline had been communicated earlier. “I don’t know where the confusion came from,” Podhradsky said.

So Farm & Garden is moving back, off of County Road 61 and onto the adjacent Firemen’s Park, utilizing a temporary “warming house.” “We want to keep doing what we’re doing without missing a beat,” Hayden said.

Meanwhile its old location (which once served as Chaska’s A&W) will be demolished. Once the building is demolished and the soil excavated, Hayden will move back to his spot next to County Road 61. “We then intend to move back onto our old site to conduct our spring season there before we move across Chaska Boulevard to a permanent home,” Hayden wrote in a letter to the editor (printed on page 4).

The permanent home would be located on the lawn of the Mill House Gallery, a business owned by Mike and Sara Hanlon, which sits to the south across the street from Farm & Garden. “From our perspective, everything is in place to move forward,” Podhradsky said.

Construction on a “carriage house” for Farm & Garden to operate from wouldn’t begin until sometime in July, said Sara Hanlon. However, the business could move to a temporary building on the site earlier than that, while the building is being constructed. Hanlon estimates that the structure, about the size of a three-car garage, would be complete within 45 days.

Meanwhile, the city recently gave the company developing the northwest corner, Doran Companies, a one-year extension to continue marketing the site to potential businesses.

Farm & Garden has been located in Chaska since 1981, and has leased a site at its current location since 1985. Besides Hayden, it employs two full-time and three part-time workers.