(WEST FARGO) – A West Fargo business owner is grappling with the lack of action from the City of West Fargo’s City Commission Tuesday night when it came to a Planned Unit Development amendment for her business.
Jodi Kallias, owner of West Fargo’s SheyWest Garden Center, said she received a letter from the City of West Fargo stating violations of the city’s zoning ordinance had taken place at her business. The violations occurred during a Mother’s Day event being held at the garden center.
“We’ve had several of those (Mother’s Day events) as a matter of fact,” Kallias said. “In 2020, we started hosting the City of West Fargo’s Farmer’s Market for the West Fargo Park District. They asked us to grow the program.”
For Mother’s Day this year, Kallias said the volume of traffic was high, and the garden center was ‘overflowing with people.’
Kallias said the biggest point of contention comes to traffic. At the Mother’s Day event, some traffic parked in the recycle center parking lot next door.
“A couple more followed suit, and I think they had 12 or 15 vehicles pull in there and park,” she said. “Normally that might not be a huge issue, but it sounds like there was a truck trying to dump one of those big bins and he could not.”
Kallias said she is unsure who complained to the city. But the city contacted them right away to see if vehicles could get moved – to which they helped.
For the future, Kallias said it’s unknown.
“I told my staff that the business will continue as usual for the time being, but we’re gonna work on listing a lot and vetting buyers for genuine purchase,” she said. “If we can move it maybe. But right now I don’t have the wherewithal to pick up the place. It was built here to be here. It doesn’t get moved. It’s just like we dug in the dirt and we put things here that everybody should be able to enjoy for 20 more years or a hundred years. I wanted my kids to come here and work and water when they’re old enough.”
