Inside the blueprint

Petitti Plants New Roots

Garden center transforms office into vibrant retail space in Bath Township

By Dan Holland | Photos by Mark Watt & courtesy of Petitti Garden Centers

Petitti Garden Centers continues to spread its roots in Northeast Ohio, unveiling its 10th retail location last month. Located at 395 Springside Dr. in Bath Township, the newly opened, 30,500-square-foot retail store, housed inside a repurposed office building, maintains the architectural integrity of the 1980s post-modern structure, showcasing its peaked rooflines, original skylights and post-and-beam timber frame construction.

The building, which includes new covered entranceways, offers customers three levels of interior shopping that connects to more than 40,000 square feet of covered outdoor greenhouse shopping space situated on the western section of the six-acre lot.

The chain of family-owned garden centers was first established in Oakwood Village in 1971 by Angelo Petitti. His son, A.J. Petitti, currently serves as company president.

Assembling a Team

Petitti’s served as general contractor for the project, enlisting an assembled team of subcontractors that have worked on all of their garden centers over the years, along with the help of Dominic Ferrito. The design team of Mann Parsons Gray (MPG) Architects, of Fairlawn, was brought aboard in summer 2023 to begin developing a scope and vision for the project. Groundbreaking took place in March 2024, with substantial completion reached one year later.

Beginnings

“It is a large laminated-timber structure with ‘sawtooth’ windows, and the objective was to determine how it could be repurposed as a retail location,” explains Ian Jones, senior director at MPG Architects. “We were approached by A.J. and Angelo Petitti, who told us they really wanted to be in Bath, and they had an idea of how it could work.”

“From that point on, it was a matter of meeting with them and figuring out what we could do to make it known that the location is no longer an office building, but a retail site; how we could make the site work, and whether we had enough space to include the greenhouse portion.”

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