Waterloo Gardens exits with dashed hopes

Waterloo Gardens is offering deep discounts as it prepares to close its last store, in Exton.

The going-out-of-business sale at the 50-acre nursery and retail property follows last year's bankruptcy filing and the closing of the LeBoutillier family business's original Devon store.

The bankruptcy followed Waterloo Gardens' ill-timed expansion to stores in Warminster and Wilmington in the late 2000s, just as the recession and the collapse of suburban housing development cut demand for landscaping services, flowers and ornamental trees, and new fountain systems, patio furniture, and other outdoor items.

According to a court filing last month by Waterloo Gardens' attorney, Albert A. Ciardi 3d, creditors led by Mid-Atlantic Farm Credit, a Westminster, Md.-based agricultural lender that is owed $15.8 million, said the business had failed "to formulate a confirmable Chapter 11 plan of reorganization or liquidation," or to renegotiate a lease for the Exton site. Ciardi was not available for comment Monday.

A reorganization might have allowed the 70-year-old retailer and its landscaping arm to stay in business under president Roberts "Bobby" LeBoutillier, who had hoped to use cash flow to salvage the Exton operation.

Instead, the debtors hired Massachusetts-based Gordon Brothers Retail Partners L.L.C. to manage the going-out-of-business sale, which, they told the bankruptcy court, needed to start "as soon as possible" to move plants before the growing season ends.

Advertisements for the sale, which promise buyers 20 to 40 percent off items in stock, also were authorized.

Waterloo Gardens was started in the center of Devon, a onetime resort area turned Upper Main Line commuter suburb, in 1942 by James Paolini, whose parents emigrated from Italy. He added the Exton nurseries in 1959.

In 1972, Paolini sold the business to daughter Zelinda and her husband, Roberts LeBoutillier. The couple profited from the boom in upscale housing construction that transformed eastern Chester County from a patchwork of gentlemen's farms to the state's richest suburban district in the easy-money years, before the 2008 financial crisis.