After 39 years in business, Winfield Flower Shoppe owners to retire

Gary Chase's favorite time of year is Christmas, and it clearly showed around his floral shop in an old red house in Winfield.

He turned the front yard into elaborate holiday scenes, creating a village out of dollhouses one year and a Santa's workshop in another. Life-size caroler figurines seemed to serenade visitors to a front porch covered in garlands, bows and logs of birch wood.

Christmas trees and decorations were just as ornate inside the Winfield Flower Shoppe. With nearly a dozen rooms and an indoor greenhouse, the shop reminded even the rushed holiday shopper to stop and smell the poinsettias.

"Christmas is my favorite," Chase said. "I just think because it's so cheerful and bright, and the Savior was born, and there's so much fun material to work with."

That tradition is coming to an end as Chase and his wife, Valerie, prepare for their retirement after nearly four decades of running the store. The Wheaton couple put the Winfield Flower Shoppe up for sale about a year ago and marked down much of their inventory.

But Chase plans to keep the shop going until a new owner comes forward.

"I just want people to know we're here, and we plan on being here and want to make a smooth transition for the next person," Chase, 66, said last week.

Ideally, he wants to sell the shop to another florist who would take the reins of the downtown landmark at the corner of Winfield Road and Beecher Avenue. There's been some interest - "we've had a few people come and look," Chase said - but no deal has been reached.

"We're not closing. We're for sale. We did have signs out. We took them away because we got so many questions," he said.

His retirement plans come after the closing of other longtime family-run downtown businesses. John's Tavern shut its doors before Christmas Eve after 96 years because its property was being sold to Northwestern Medicine.

The new downtown landscape sharply contrasts with the one Chase remembers growing up in Winfield.

"We used to have a Sears store, a couple clothing stores. There was a grocery store. Right now, it's a couple antique shops and other than that, food. It's just a different era. People are different."

But his shop has retained its throwback charm in a house built in the late 1800s and expanded over the years. Lace curtains hung on the door, Tiffany lamps provided a warm glow and an aluminum cash register sat on the front counter.

"Our clientele has gotten older and don't need things as much, but when they do come in, they're sad to see you go," Chase said.

While he's nostalgic, Chase also seems ready to move on. He and his wife recently became grandparents again, and their other daughter is expecting.

"I suppose it will be bittersweet when you walk out the door for the last time, but we've been planning this for a couple years now," he said.

He opened the store at 27 with a degree in horticulture and experience working in a Hinsdale floral shop.

"I always wanted to be a retail florist since I was a little kid. It's 39 years, six days a week."

While Valerie largely handled the finances, Chase was the creative one.

"They're wonderful people. We're like a family here," seven-year employee Norma Contreras said.

He took pride in the longevity of fresh-cut flowers arranged by the shop's floral designers and points to Freedom red roses as an example of his eye for quality:

"If you get it from one particular grower, it's got ginormous, 3-inch heads and thick stems and another grower might have 1.5-, 2-inch," Chase said. "People are under the misconception that a rose is a rose, and that is not true."

He treated grieving families with sensitivity, setting aside a private corner of the shop near a pump organ and small angel statues for them to plan floral arrangements for funerals. Brides, too, had their own room on the second floor.

"It gets to be an emotional seesaw sometimes," Chase said. "We go home exhausted because you're serving a funeral family and then a bride comes in and then you do a 'get well' and a birthday."

Chase said the response from customers over the past year has helped him prepare for the next chapter.

"The good Lord's shown me it's time to move on," he said.