A new chapter for former Newport’s Flowers building

While the days of Newport’s Flowers in Cedar Rapids have ended, the florists’ onetime home is being revived by a local family with a passion for historical preservation.

Gina Lansdown and her husband, Brett, purchased the iconic property at 2125 Wilson Ave. SW in June 2022 and have since been in the process of restoring and refurbishing the property for a variety of uses, including a restaurant, an apartment and a commercial office.

The process hasn’t been easy, and it’s taken more time than envisioned. But for the Lansdowns, bringing a well-recognized property back to use is well worth the effort.

Historic preservation enthusiasts

The Lansdowns have long had an interest in the renovation and preservation of historic buildings like Newport’s Flowers.

Having lived in the Cedar Rapids area for more than 30 years, the couple has gained experience in historic renovation with their purchase of a southeast Cedar Rapids home built for the prominent Sutherland Dows family.

The home was attractive, but wasn’t in great condition, Ms. Lansdown said.

“It was a labor of love,” she said. “It needed so much work. It had a pool, but we had to redo it. We put on a new roof, added new flooring through the entire house, new plumbing, new bathrooms.”

The Lansdowns worked with a contractor specializing in the renovation and restoration of historic properties.

“He’s used to renovating old homes,” Ms. Lansdown said. “He’s a professional. We’ve hired him everywhere we go. We kept the original kitchen cabinets and heightened them, then we had them painted. We put new countertops on, and he built new things to match the trim. It was amazing.”

Newport’s legacy

A similar, and much larger, project faces the Lansdowns at the former Newport’s Flowers building, set well back from the street along Wilson Avenue SW.

Originally established in 1898, Newport’s — owned by the same family for several decades — served the community in various incarnations over the years, with several new portions added to the facility over the years.

“We were told that there were three brothers or three family members, and the buildings were sectioned off,” Ms. Lansdown said. “One family member owned the store part, another one had the middle part and then another one had the other end. It was one business, but they each owned different parts of the operation.”

Most visibly, the facility’s large smokestack — affixed to a furnace that provided heat to the facility and its greenhouse — remains standing as one of southwest Cedar Rapids’ most recognizable icons.

The business struggled through the early portion of the 2000s, and the showroom and greenhouses were extensively damaged in the August 2020 derecho. The roof was ripped off large portions of the buildings, and the greenhouses at the south portion of the building were decimated.

A Marion-based florist reopened Newport’s Flowers after the derecho, but that endeavor was short-lived, and the Lansdowns purchased the property for $215,000 in a transaction finalized in June 2022.

“I actually look through Zillow all the time, for properties for investment purposes, and I saw this building,” Ms. Lansdown said. “I knew it was iconic, it was really cheap, and it had two acres. I showed my husband and we were like, ‘Oh my gosh, we’ve got to go see it.’ We did, and we put in an offer. There were other people trying to get it as well. Somebody else actually had an architect coming to look, but we swooped in and said we won’t even do an inspection. We’ll just take it and we’ll deal with it.

“The price was right, there was property with it, and there was potential to save it.”

What’s been done so far

Some portions of the Newport’s Flowers renovation are proceeding more slowly than expected, Ms. Lansdown said.

The upper level of the main flower shop has been renovated into an apartment that is already occupied.

The main-level shop was reopened as the Newport Emporium, a gift shop open by appointment, to allow the property to be grandfathered under its existing business zoning designation.

The emporium is being closed, Ms. Lansdown said.

Brett Lansdown has also moved his business, Moose Mechanical, an electrical and plumbing contractor founded in 2016, into an older portion of the building, and the family has carved out a portion of the building for office space.

Other plans still unfolding

The building itself still has several remnants of its florist origins, with packaging materials, floral tables and calendars throughout.

“There was so much stuff in here,” Ms. Lansdown said. “I did know that the Newports no longer owned it, that they had sold it to an employee, which was who we bought it from, and she and her husband had owned it for maybe 25 or 30 years. Then (the husband) passed away, and it kind of dwindled down. They had always done the business together. Then when he passed away, she had continued trying to operate the business as a flower shop. She told us the phone would still ring when we bought the property.”

A large cooler in the rear of the building is still functional, Ms. Lansdown said, but many other areas of the building are in need of extensive renovation, or in some cases, outright reconstruction. Many portions of the roof had collapsed in recent years, and water damage throughout the building was extensive.

Ms. Lansdown said she still hopes to open a wood-fired pizza restaurant in the eastern portion of the building, and renovate part of the western portion of the building as an event venue, or perhaps as a bed-and-breakfast style facility.

In the long term, she said, she hopes to build six to eight townhouse-style apartments at the front of the property, closer to Wilson Avenue, likely to serve residents aged 55 and older.

But some of those plans are on hold, Ms. Lansdown said, as they work with their renovator and arrange necessary financing.

“We have all kinds of ideas floating around,” she said. “It’s just a love I have. I like to make all things new again, and not just have new things. And thankfully, my husband kind of goes along with that philosophy.”

Neighborhood support

Reception for the plans in the neighborhood has been overwhelmingly positive, Ms. Lansdown said.

“We had a neighborhood meeting, and the people that ended up coming were super excited to see us doing something with it. They were like, ‘We’ll come with you. We don’t care what you do, as long as you do something.’”

Tom Newport, a prominent local sculptor and artist, lives just east of the Newport’s Flowers property, and as a family member, he’s also been encouraged by the Lansdowns’ plans.

“Tom and his wife and their family, they owned this, and they love that it’s being restored,” Ms. Lansdown said. “One of the doors blew out of the apartment when we were renovating, and (Ms. Newport) called us to say, ‘oh my gosh, your door is open,’ so I went over to close the door. They’re excited that it’s not just going to continue to fall apart.”

For Ms. Lansdown and her family, preserving the building’s legacy is a key element of their plans.

“There was an investor that wanted the property, but they were going to level it,” he she said. “We said ‘well, we would save it because we see a lot of potential with it.’”

Ms. Lansdown said she doesn’t foresee restarting a floral operation at the site. 

“There’s not a lot we can do,” she said. “I’m not a florist. I’m actually a black thumb. We thought it would be neat to hold on to it. But finding somebody that has that experience as a florist is more difficult. And competing with Hy-Vee and some of these other places that are already established — we couldn’t roll the dice on that.”

Regardless of the future plans, Ms. Lansdown said it’s been satisfying to help save a Cedar Rapids landmark.

“It’s not for the faint of heart,” she said. “Through it, we all wanted to cry at different points, but it’s coming together. And now we can see it easier. When we first got here, after about three months of working in heat with no air conditioning — and my kids cleaned this place out, scraped and scraped, took up old carpet. It just sat empty for so long. Eventually, it’ll be done. It might be 20 years before it’s completely done. But we want the businesses here to make it. Our kids work on every project. They work hard. We want to be able to pass it on to them and for them to do something with it.”