The American Dream was on full display March 26 in the baseball-capped form of Luis Barragan. Far from dancing down streets paved with gold, he was wrestling with spring display stands at Jackson Avenue Nursery, as of this year his own business.
In 1996, Barragan, now 31, first came to America. He now takes his place among heroes of past generations from foreign-born garment workers to stonemasons who started as laborers and eventually owned the company.
He becomes the most recent of more than 2.5 million Hispanic business owners in the U.S., according to the Westchester County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a force generating some $400 billion in annual gross receipts.
Barragan worked in landscaping for a dozen years, specializing in sprinkler installations for Scarsdale-based Scaping Land Development Co. When the opportunity to step up to management arrived this year, he took it. He leased the space of the former Jackson Avenue Nursery from Scaping ”“ previous nursery store management had closed the shop between the Sprain Parkway and Central Park Avenue in January ”“ and made the nursery store his own.
Said Barragan while straightening stock: “The previous owner closed and that”™s when I got this idea: Why don”™t I start the business?”
His story, according to Salvatore Olivia, who leases the storefront to Barragan while running Scaping Land Development Co. on the same multitiered site, represents the American Dream: “Absolutely. He came from Mexico. Got his papers. Was working for us for up to 12 years. And now he”™s able to open his own operation.”
Olivia said his 25-year-old business and Barragan”™s venture (279 Jackson Ave., Scarsdale) will help each other: “We do a lot of construction and site work,” Olivia said. “We deal with a lot of bulk products. Having Luis run the retail garden center here ”“ one complements the other.”
Barragan, 31, is a native of Michoacan, Mexico. His wife, Elvia Salcedo, and their two children, Daisy and Ricardo, live in New Rochelle, a reality that might have seemed improbable when the couple met and became friends as 8-year-olds in Michoacan.
Barragan is well aware there is a recession going on. Did he pick the wrong time to jump head first into capitalism”™s front lines?
“I know the timing is off ”“ that we”™re starting down with the economy,” Barragan said. “But I know a lot of people in the business who need this stuff. It might not be this year, but next year that things will pick up.” Then, with a glass-half-full smile, he said, “But you never know ”“ it might be this year.”
On the retail side, Jackson Avenue Nursery will offer flats of annuals and perennials, plus cut flowers, trees and landscape statues. Pumpkins arrive in the fall. Come Thanksgiving, expect a full forest of Christmas trees. The service side of the business includes landscaping, sod, landscape masonry and sprinkler services.
The store is open now, but Barragan plans a big grand opening the second week of May.
The U.S. Census reports that as of 2008, 19.5 percent of Westchester County”™s 953,000 residents were Hispanic.
Fannie Lansch is president of the Westchester County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Her take on the power of the Hispanic economy: “This year, the Hispanic purchasing power in America is estimated at $1 trillion.”
The Hispanic chamber, still without any official count of members, is working to teach the likes of Barragan a basic business skill: that one big client can be more important than many small clients.
“We”™re putting together a program to promote women- and minority-owned businesses in the county ”“ this will include Hispanics and others,” Lansch, who has been named to County Executive Rob Astorino”™s economic advisory team, said. “We”™ll be talking about applying for public and private sector contracts.
“If you have one big account,” she said, “it can be better than waiting for people to come through the door.”
Lansch is a proponent of networking ”“ something the affable Barragan has been doing the old-fashioned way for a dozen years ”“ and, though she does not know Barragan, would advise him to direct some energies into tech-driven social networking “to expand his contacts and his customer base.”
The Hispanic chamber is lining up businesses to offer first-hand teaching experiences.
“Westchester has seen extremely rapid growth within the Hispanic and Latino community over the past 20 years,” Lansch said.
