Fresh Cut Flowers closing due to Prahran Market dispute

A FAMILY-run fresh flowers business is closing after 25 years due to a dispute with Prahran Market management.

Michael and Sophia Dickson are facing the loss of the business their family has run for more than 20 years, with Prahran Market management refusing to renew their lease when it expires in August. Sophia Dickson with some of her flowers, Picture Yuri Kouzmin

ONE of Prahran Market’s longest-running stalls is closing after a quarter of a century of doing business, as a management dispute drags on.

Florists Michael and Sophia Dickson say they are facing the loss of their family business, Fresh Cut Flowers, with the market allegedly refusing to renew their lease beyond next month.

“They haven’t given us a reason,” Mrs Dickson said.

“My husband and I have been there for more than 20 years, and my father ran it before that. We are never late with our rent.”

Without a lease, she said it would be impossible to sell the business, leaving the pair — and their three staff members — in the lurch.

“They have put us in a really difficult position,” she said.

“You feel you don’t have any rights as a stall holder.”

Several readers have written to Stonnington Leader in support of the couple, with one, Raizel Fogel, praising the Fresh Cut Flowers staff for “being unbelievable in every way — their prices, their service, their friendliness and their quality in the products they sell”.

Stonnington Leader asked Prahran Market why the lease wasn’t being renewed and what business would be occupying the soon-to-be-vacant stall.

But Prahran Market general manager Chris Young said he could not comment as the matter was subject to a legal dispute and therefore confidential.

Mr Dickson was previously the spokesman for the stallholders in a dispute with management and more recently spoke out about the market’s congested carpark.

The couple said their lawyers had been trying to broker a solution for the past six months.