With more than five offers on its prime South End property, the owners of over 76 percent of The Boston Flower Exchange’s shares recently voted to sell its 5.6-acre site on Albany Street in Boston, according to an article in The Boston Globe. It has been the focal point of New England floral trade for over 100 years and currently houses 14 independent wholesale companies that sell domestic and imported cut flowers, foliage, potted plants and supplies to retail shops and supermarket chains.

“Naturally, I have a sentimental attachment to the wholesale flower industry and this market in particular,” David Brown, president at Chester Brown Wholesale Florist Inc. in Boston, grandson of the company’s founder and vendor at the BFE, told The Produce News. “However, I cannot be blind to the inevitable march of time. What has happened to the South End of Boston (like a lot of marginalized areas of many cities) is a good thing. A once downtrodden, crime-ridden area is now morphing into a place where people want to live. Restaurants, supermarkets and high-rise apartment complexes are popping up like crazy around us.”

The Boston Flower Exchange moved from the Cyclorama building on Tremont Street into the Albany Street location in 1971 with more than 40 wholesalers.

“Original rules required that only New England-grown products be sold at the exchange but that didn’t last long as imports started coming in from all over the country and eventually the world,” Brown said. “Competition dictates and the flower market has been no exception to that rule.”

As the floral industry (and the world) continued to grow and change in ways unimagined in the 1970s, the number of wholesalers in the exchange declined.

“There continue to be so many rapid changes in our industry,” said Brown. “I would cite the disappearance of the brick-and-mortar flower shops for starters and you can include the bevy of wholesale middlemen that have not survived. And the Internet has improved our ability to communicate (instant information on your mobile device) but also has threatened to commoditize our industry. Our customers shop hard.”

It’s unclear what the future holds for current exchange vendors after the sale or whether they will finish out their leases, set to expire in December 2017. Some have expressed an interest in relocating the collective to another part of town, while others may just close up due to the high cost of land in the Boston area.

“All told, I think it is difficult to fill the rental booths in the Boston Flower market,” Brown said. “All expenses associated with running the property have soared over the past 10-15 years and the rents have become unaffordable.”

Nevertheless, in a letter from the flower exchange board of directors to its members, the board reaffirmed “its commitment to work with the tenants in the event that they decide to relocate to a new facility.”