Dow Landscape Materials

2017-05-04 Dow Landscape Materials expands service

"4 May 2017"

Clipped from: http://www.cheneyfreepress.com/story/2017/05/04/news/dow-landscape-materials-expands-service/20540.html

Paul Delaney

The Dow Landscape Materials crew, (L-R): Ben Armstrong, Mackenzie Bacon, John Russell, Jesse Plowman, Wayne Dow, Mike Kline and Tully Kerr.

For decades the Dow name has been a fixture in Cheney, providing products and services to the community.

With the lease last September of the former Myers' Mobile Home Park property from the city of Cheney, Wayne Dow looks to continue that connection.

It appears to have been a win-win deal for both the city and Dow.

"We outgrew the former location" the 47-year-old Dow said of the 15 Union St. address near downtown Cheney. He's grown from property of about an acre to seven, which has allowed him to greatly expand the offerings for Dow Landscape Materials.

As for the city, in 1995, Thomas Myers entered into a protracted legal battle over a variety of code enforcement issues and ultimately settled the issue by turning over the property - valued at $840,000 - to the city in order to satisfy demands and avoid jail time.

"I approached the city, I approached the mayor's office, I sat down with them and I told them what I would like to do," Dow said. His goal was to come up with some type of agreement that would work for everybody.

It certainly seems to have worked for Dow who now has over 30 products in his line from bark to rock to various soil mixtures. "We're going to shoot for about 50," he said.

And he's got some plans that he does not want to divulge at this time. "If you tell the world what you're doing, they'll beat you to it," Dow said.

The familiarity of the Dow name includes most recently, his mother, author Luella Dow who passed away last year and goes back to Wally Dow who started the business his son now operates.

"He started this business back in the1960s, he'd bring in a farm tractor to pull out a stump for an old lady," Dow said. "She bragged to her neighbor and he came in and did something for her."

That's how it all started. There wasn't any money milking cows back then, Dow said.

"I've been doing excavation since 1988," Dow said. He went out on his own in 1992 and incorporated in 1994. "My father had started it, I bought him out and took over," he added.

In 2010 the name changed from Wally's Excavating - his father's business - to Dow Excavating and now adding landscape materials.

"When the crash hit in '08 and '09, we were really busy," Dow said. The recession never hit Dow's business until 2010 when the full effect struck and took with it the building business, too.

What was a niche that Cheney didn't have and Dow could provide? The stuff people put around their homes in flower beds and gardens, but traveled miles to buy.

"I still had my excavating business, (but) from that (materials) we've grown," Dow said.

While it's been good for Dow, expanding his business has been good for the community in more than just having a place to buy landscape bark, rocks or dozens of other products stored in large bins constructed from 4,000-pound blocks of concrete.

Of all the products Dow offers, it's the garden mix, created and refined by yard manager Jesse Plowman, that's the most popular.

Dow said they started out with, "What was good; we thought it was good but we made it so much better," he said. "Now we have a product that we really, really like."

Having been that long-time name in the community, among other things that are important to Dow, is providing for others and giving back. His hiring of additional workers is one of those plusses. The company employs five people, he said.

"I can hire people locally and provide jobs and provide the community with something local," Dow said. "I think it's a great asset for the city of Cheney," and it helped clean up a former eyesore of vacant land at a gateway to the city.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Dow Landscape Materials is located at 707 W. First St. To contact Dow Landscape Materials, call (509) 235-4511, email dow_exc@yahoo.com or visit wayne-dow-vty6.squarespace.com.

Paul Delaney can be reached at pdelaney@cheneyfreepress.com.