Future of Spooner Berry stand uncertain as city agrees to negotiate park, school location
This summer will mark the 40th year Tim and Sue Spooner have sold fresh local berries to the people of Washington.
And with the COVID-19 pandemic winding down, Sue said she’s excited to see the return of their strawberry U-Pick field this June at their main location on Yelm Highway.
But on March 22, the Olympia City Council voted unanimously to negotiate a partnership with the Olympia School District to locate a school adjacent to a proposed Yelm Highway Community Park on that U-Pick site.
The Spooners, who say they’ve been left out of the conversation so far, aren’t sure what lies ahead for their berry stand that sits at the edge of the 83-acre property.
‘Berry’ is their middle name
Tim and Sue Spooner got married in 1980, well into Tim’s life as a berry grower. He started out with his father in Puyallup, growing strawberry and raspberry plants for other growers. After they married, Sue convinced Tim that since they were already raising plants, they might as well sell their own berries.
This led them to Olympia in 1983, where they leased a few acres of property at 3327 Yelm Hwy SE for a strawberry field and started selling the fruit in Lacey out of a utility trailer hooked to the back of Sue’s Jeep. It was their first independent endeavor.
Later, they purchased 200 acres of land a few miles down the highway, where they now grow raspberries, marionberries, blackberries and blueberries. Over the years, they’ve expanded their stands and sales to more than a dozen locations across Western Washington.
Places continue to ask them to provide berries for their stores or towns, but Sue said the farm is currently at its max.
“We feel that to give everyone the best quality that we can is to not open up any more locations, because we’re doing what we can to supply all the locations we have right now,” Sue said. “Bigger isn’t always better.”
Sue said it’s quite the feat serving such a large community already, with the amount of work that goes into the daily harvest. When berries are in season, crews go out to pick at 5 a.m. to get them to stores and stands by 9 a.m. or so. The berries are picked and sold that day and the stands close when they run out. That way, the Spooners can guarantee every customer gets fresh produce.
“It’s difficult, but it’s what we’ve done all these years,” she said.
Sue said growing berry plants is in her husband’s blood. And combined with her marketing skills, growing and selling berries has become a great passion of theirs. She said that’s why she tells people “berry” is their middle name.
Sue said she and her husband have no plans to retire any time soon.
“We have a real sense of commitment to these communities we provide berries to every year,” she said.
More discussions to come
The city of Olympia purchased the property that the stand and U-Pick field are on back in 2018 for $10.7 million, but have continued to lease the site to the Spooners. At that point, Sue said city officials told them that one day their U-Pick field may disappear, but their berry stand could stay there indefinitely.
Since then, renderings for the proposed park and now the school have gone back and forth on their layouts, and vary in whether or not the berry stand lies within future development boundaries.
The city has yet to approve a sale with the Olympia School District for the property, but if it does, it’s up to the district whether it will continue leasing property to the Spooners. Though any construction plans are years out, the Spooners still feel left out of the conversation.
Sue said the city was good to work with on figuring out the future of the property until the decision to continue negotiations with the school district was made. She said she hasn’t heard anything from the school district on their plans for the property.
A representative from the Olympia School District could not be reached for comment last week, which was spring break.
Laura Keehan, parks planner for the city of Olympia, said that as it stands now, what’s being sold to the school district includes all the property Spooner Berry Farms uses. She said there are still many decisions to be made and many conversations to have, but she hopes the three entities can work together in the future.
“With construction of a school being 10-15 years out, we’ve got time to do it,” Keehan said. “The city of Olympia doesn’t want to be known as the ‘berry killer.’”
This story was originally published April 11, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
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