Flower shop owner waits to get on with his life

BLOOMFIELD, NJ — Nick Zois arrives at the corner of Glenwood Avenue and Washington Street six or seven times a week, just to pass the time in the sun or shade. At this corner is where he ran his business, Roxy Florist, and had eight tenants, until a fire destroyed everything on Tuesday, Jan. 21, his 89th birthday.

“I come down and just look,” he said this past Saturday. “My son sometimes opens the door and we look in to see if anything can be salvaged. It’s been 65 years since I’ve been here improving the building.”

Zois says he got to know the flower business at Forest Hill Florist, his father’s shop on Broad and Market streets in Newark.

“When I was 9 or 10, my mother said I was a bad little boy,” he said. “I lived in Newark and, one day, I was walking on the top of a freight train car. A policeman caught me and, for punishment, I had to work in my father’s flower store. Everyday I had to go down to his shop to stay out of trouble. I hated the business when I had to do that.”

After graduating from high school, Zois was drafted into the Army and spent three years, nine months and 15 days in military service as a medic. He was stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington, and still carries a military service card in his wallet. He pulls it out and shows it.

“When I got out, I realized how much I missed the flower business,” he said. “But I told my father that too many people owned Forest Hill Florist, and, with too many owners, you could never get anything straightened out. So I told him I had to get my own shop and found this place.”

The place he found was already called Roxy Florist, but it had been vacant for six months. He points to the familiar sign hanging above the front door. It was there when he first arrived and the building was owned by Mary McGuiness.

“She gave me the lease,” he said. “Her godfather was the president of the Bloomfield Savings Bank. He was reluctant, because I was such a young guy.”

At that time, his shop was not as spacious as today. There was also a bakery, the Bloomfield Bake Shop, that fronted both Washington Street and Glenwood Avenue.

“I took care of the building for Mary and I’d bill her,” he said. “But her son and daughter had no interest in the building, so she approached me to buy it. The same day, the baker said he was going to retire. I told him I was depending on his rent! He did me a favor when he moved out. It was in a U-shape store around Roxy. The barber shop today is where the bakery was. Before the barber shop, there was a men’s clothing store. And on the top floor was a rooming house, the Glenwood Hotel.”

Eventually, the individual who owned the lease for the hotel retired, and Zois purchased the business from him for $2,000.

“I got a girl to clean it up and change the linen,” he said. “I ran that for a couple of years. And then the (Bloomfield Township) Housing Authority told me I needed new doors — 24 of them.”

Zois said he hung the first new door and the Housing Authority approved it. So he hung the rest of the doors but was told they were not up to code.

“The town brought me to court,” he said. “Before the judge, I raised my hand and asked the judge if I could say something. He said yes, and I said, ‘I know I’m going to win, but that book of rules is so thick, I know I’ll lose eventually. What do I have to do to close the hotel?” That had to be about 25 years ago. My paperwork didn’t burn, but it’s all wet.”

Zois had the hotel gutted, made four offices and gutted the ground level for three stores.

“I had some real nice tenants and nice employees working for me,” he said.

Four of his former employees went into business for themselves, he said, but they failed.

“A flower business is easy to open up,” he said. “All you need is a refrigerator, a counter and a display. The problem is that you have to sell the flowers in two days. If you can’t, that adds up.”

Zois said, when he started Roxy, he had no clientele and worked from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. He purchased his flowers from Mueller’s on Central Avenue in Newark.

“It was a lot of hustling,” he said. “I catered to our customers. Sometimes, on a holiday, there’d be a funeral and I’d be open for them. I never turned them down.”

After his wife, Diane, died nine years ago, Zois said he was not going to retire, although he could have.

“This was my hobby,” he said. “But I was looking for a buyer to take over the flower shop. I had two nice girls walk in and wanted to buy the shop. They didn’t know a rose from a carnation and I said no. After two months, if they didn’t know where to buy or what to do, the store would close. I didn’t want that. This is my baby.”

Another woman wanted to buy the business but could not afford it. So Zois had an architect draw up plans to divide the store to make it more reasonable to rent.

“I’d sell her the business and rent out the store,” he said. “I didn’t want to close up the store. It was pending when all this happened — the fire. I haven’t heard from her since. I guess they took off.”

Zois has served as the president of the Suburban Chamber of Commerce and has been active with the Bloomfield Center Alliance.

“I bought 35 bulletproof vests for the Bloomfield police when they first came out,” he said. “And I put up wreaths for Veterans Day. A lot of little things I don’t even remember.”

He said Felicia Leo was his bookkeeper and kept a record of what he did. She died four years ago.

“I devoted my time to Bloomfield because I like Bloomfield,” he said. “It was a good place for me.”

Zois he is waiting to hear from the insurance company to tell him what he can do. He thinks the building will be condemned.

“If it is condemned, I am going to build a nice new modern building — with a flower shop in it,” he said. “If I were rebuilding, I’d make it harmonize with the newer buildings in the center. It would have three floors: retail, offices and apartments. It’s a nice piece of property.”

Standing on the sidewalk in the bright sun, taking careful steps because of water on the knee that he intends to get remedied, Zois points to the side door of his “baby.”

“For 65 years, I’ve been opening and closing that door,” he said. “It hurts. My son won’t even let me in there with everything falling down. At my age, what can I do? I love the flower business. I’m not going to twiddle my thumbs.”

  Nick Zois, Roxy Florist