GREENSBORO — It happened rather quickly.

Canadian businessman Mark Gold bought Golden Gate Shopping Center in March and, in six weeks time, subtle changes were visible. The storefronts looked cleaner and “coming soon” signs began to appear in the windows of buildings that had long been vacant.

And then there were the not-so-subtle changes. Like the traveling zoo that set up in the shopping center parking lot last week, complete with a white tiger named Sierra and a camel called Mr. Adair.

Welcome to the new Golden Gate Shopping Center.

Is Greensboro ready for it? Those with a stake in its future sure hope so.

“We would love to see local entrepreneurs (and) business owners give Golden Gate a try,” said Callie Wendt with Essa Commercial Real Estate, the company that handles leasing at the center. “It’s something that is changing a lot right now, so it will look a lot different in the next couple of months. Certainly, we hope to get as much interest as possible.”

The change will include a new name — The Village at Golden Gate. The term village is appropriate, perhaps, because Gold wants to make the center a family destination.

Thus, the traveling zoo and a host of “good surprises” Gold said he has in store for Golden Gate.

“I’m going to make this busy again,” Gold proclaimed last week during a visit to the shopping center.

Busy is something those familiar with Golden Gate say it hasn’t been in years. Wendt, who grew up near the shopping center, said it became a different place over the last several years.

“Definitely, the shopping center had more tenants, particularly when Harris Teeter was around,” Wendt said. “It was somewhere that you would go and see several people from your neighborhood.”

Harris Teeter closed in 2011. Food Lion is leasing that space to keep out competition.

Starbucks also left the center, as did a Hallmark shop, Wendt said.

But she pointed out that several of the remaining tenants — such as Vito’s Italian restaurant, Staples and VIP Nails — have withstood Golden Gate’s challenges.

“Many of the tenants that are currently there have been there for several years or more,” Wendt said.

There’s a reason for that, she said. Golden Gate is a shopping center that accommodates everyone.

By that, she means the shopping center caters to a mix of consumers. Golden Gate is surrounded by affluent Old Irving Park, middle-class neighborhoods and lower-income housing.

The diversity surrounding Golden Gate is one of the things Gold said he liked about the shopping center. He bought it in March from Beachwood, Ohio-based DDR Corp. for $7.1 million.

“It’s in the middle of the action,” Gold said.

Wendt said Golden Gate historically has been home to smaller businesses, as opposed to national retailers, and Gold said he wants to continue that tradition by filling the center with mom-and-pop tenants to complement the anchor stores, Staples and Food Lion.

“I welcome local tenants,” he said.

The Green Bean coffee shop is moving into the old Starbucks location and an antiques shop will open soon.

A hair salon, dollar store and restaurant will also join the shopping center, although Gold would not provide specifics on those businesses.

And while customers are shopping, they might want to swing by the adventure park Gold is planning — or pet an animal or two at the traveling zoo.

The Jungle Safari was at Golden Gate last week and attracted several visitors.

“I do this all over the United States and Canada,” Gold said of his redevelopment style.

Think it’s crazy? Think again.

Shopping centers are getting creative with how they attract customers. The idea that they are solely a place to buy goods “has kind of gone by the wayside,” said Jesse Tron, a spokesman with the International Council of Shopping Centers. Instead, what shopping centers are now trying to do is to give customers an experience.

It all stems from the hit the retail industry took during the recession, Tron said. Not only did people cut back on spending, but some retailers were forced to close their doors altogether.

As a result, Tron said landlords were faced with filling empty stores.

Do they wait for another retailer to occupy that space — or break tradition and go with a different type of tenant?

They broke with tradition.

For example, the Eden Mall in Rockingham County is now part flea market. Burlington’s indoor mall, Holly Hill, also operates as a community center of sorts, hosting events such as car shows.

Wendt said Gold has brought a new perspective to retail’s changing face. Essa Real Estate has gotten positive response from some of his ideas, such as the adventure park, although she acknowledges not everybody will like it.

Wendt said these new concepts are a risk but one she believes is worth taking.

As for Gold, well, he’s just excited. He drove through the center last week pointing out recent upgrades and those yet to come, such as new plants to adorn the outside of the buildings.

“It’s going to be really cool,” he said.

FREMONT, Nebraska — When Fremont City Gardener Jon Kuddes opens the door to the greenhouse, he opens the door to a world of color.

Reds and pinks dominate, but added to the array are ornamental grasses in shades of green and deep red and a little color in the new plants in plastic containers.

All have been spread across the tops of the many tables lining the greenhouse walls. Even the ground beneath the tables has splashes of color, gifts from the seeds that have dropped there and been allowed to sprout and spread.

Kuddes transplants mature plants, harvests seeds and clips cuttings so Fremont’s city-owned flower beds will be awash with color throughout the growing season. In the greenhouse, the grass table is the first plant table encountered. It holds five different varieties of grasses.

“I do a lot of work transplanting grasses. I dig up a clump from the center of a plant and am able to get four or five plants out of that clump. I keep them here in the greenhouse for a year or two before planting them in the flower beds,” Kuddes told the Fremont Tribune (http://bit.ly/1qDL5Lz). “I started with three plants of fountain grass and have grown a dozen or more from those.”

Fountain grass is planted in the bigger flower beds.

On another table are canna lilies, seven varieties, all started from a tuber or root of a plant growing in one of the beds and harvested at the end of the growing season. About 200 plants fill the table top. It’s a labor-intensive job to dig up the plants each fall, clean soil from the bulbs, then plant them in pots. This is done in October and November to give the bulbs time to take root, grow over the winter and be ready to replant in the spring.

There is the red, white and blue table with blue and white ageratum and red and white vinca. Kuddes estimates there are about 900 plants on the table. Red salvia, impatiens, marigolds and other plants fill remaining tables.

“Not everything I plant, I grow here,” Kuddes said. “The Splash Station and the cemetery need color right away. I try to get color at the cemetery for Memorial Day.”

The remaining flower beds are mostly filled with plants Kuddes has grown in the greenhouse. It was not always so. When he started in March 2008, not much propagation was happening in the greenhouse. In 2007, the city spent $10,000 on bedding plants. Last summer, the city spent about $700. That amount includes seeds, plants, plant containers and potting soil that Kuddes mixes himself, a 75 percent savings on soil alone.

Kuddes uses his own design ideas for the flower beds.

“I do a lot of it in my head,” he said.

He has drawn design sheets on his computer for each bedding plot. He saves them so they can be used each year to re-imagine the space based on what he has available for planting.

When Kuddes began college at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, he planned to be a “turf guy” who would maintain the grass at sports venues like ball parks and golf clubs.

A summer opportunity moved him from that path and into public flower beds. Kuddes grows the plants, designs the flower beds and plants them.

“I am self-taught, hands-on, and learning as I go,” he said.

Flower seeds are saved from year to year.

“I collect the seeds when the blooms get to the place where they are crispy and dried up. I pull off the bloom of a plant like salvia, let it dry, then collect the seeds. It’s the same with marigolds. There can be a million seeds in one marigold bed,” he said.

This season, he will use cuttings grown from plants used in the beds four years ago. He prepares the transplant by snipping off all flowers and larger leaves from a flowering stem. Kuddes will trim the buds as soon as they begin to show color so the plant can focus more of making a good root system. This year will be his sixth generation of cuttings from impatiens. He begins taking cuttings in January for plants used in the flower beds the coming summer.

Hostas and day lilies fill the spaces under the tables. They grow in the gravel below so they can be transplanted easily into the flower beds. Piles of pots and trays fill remaining greenhouse spaces.

“There are about 24 landscaped areas, flower beds and planters throughout the city of Fremont. They are located in the parks, around city building and facilities and in the right of way areas,” he said.

Under each landscaped area location is listed the number and location of each bed or planting. For example, under the listing for downtown are 25 cutouts in sidewalks, 45 hanging baskets, the landscaped area in the KHUB parking lot, 12 planters on various corners and the flower bed in “Rump’s Lot.”

Kuddes spent almost 90 hours just watering plants and flowers last year. He uses a tank truck for watering chores and a part-time employee waters hanging baskets in the downtown area.

“When the beds still look good in August, there’s a lot to be proud of,” he said.

Kuddes has a list of future landscaping projects like the areas around the Barnard Park gazebo and rose garden.

In the planter outside the greenhouse on South Broad Street tulips are in bloom. The flower beds around Fremont City Auditorium also hold tulips and daffodils. In a few weeks the culmination of a year of planting and propagation will begin to be visible all over the city — Kuddes’ work displayed for all to see.

Information from: Fremont Tribune, http://www.fremontneb.com

Art in the Garden Tour: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. today in the Picacho Hills. Shop for local artwork and get ideas for landscaping and gardening on the tour of six gardens. Maps to the various garden will be available in the commercial area near the bottom of the hill (from Picacho Avenue take Picacho Hills Drive north). Tall red flags will make it easy to locate the gardens. Info: artistsofpicachohills.com, 575-523-1740.

Sidewalk Nursery: 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sundays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays in April in front of the Mountain View Market Co-Op, 1300 El Paseo Road. Robledo Vista Nursery specializes in low-water native and adapted plants. Info: 915-203-4385.

Farm volunteer days: 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Wednesdays and Saturdays in April at the Mountain View Market Farm, 2653 Snow Road. Find out more about composting, vermiculture, aquaponics, laying hens and crop planning in this region. Info: 575-523-0436.

Garden question hotline: The county agricultural extension office maintains a hotline for county residents to answer questions and solve problems related to home gardening, including trees, lawns, shrubs, native plants, weeds and insects. The hotline is staffed by trained master gardeners each Tuesday and Friday from 9 a.m. to noon. Info: 575-525-6649.

MELBOURNE – One hundred delegates gathered at Florida Instiute of Technology this weekend came up with 10 main ideas to cure the Indian River Lagoon, centering on septic tanks, muck and public awareness.

While they haggled over wording, the scientists, government and business leaders chosen by a nonprofit group agreed on the main gist of proposed lagoon fixes.

After breaking into smaller groups and voting, they whittled more than 100 ideas down to just 10 as the Lagoon Action Assembly wrapped up Saturday.

The Marine Resources Council, the nonprofit that ran the three-day event, plans to present the final wording of the proposed 10 actions during a public forum at 5:30 p.m. May 29 at Front Street Civic Center in Melbourne.

The delegates’ draft action items centered on creating a muck management program; identifying leaking septic tanks; supporting stricter state stormwater rules for new development; and educating the public about lagoon-friendly landscaping.

Other ideas included increasing street sweeping; promoting compliance and enforcement of new fertilizer ordinances; encouraging water reuse in urban areas and on farmland; and developing better ways to measure progress on pollution, habitat and species in the lagoon.

“I believe strongly, we as delegates have to be willing to be brave,” said Martin County Commissioner Ed Fielding, a delegate who also sits on the five-county Indian River Lagoon Counties Collaborative.

“We’re aiming for restoring the quality of life of our lagoon,” Fielding said, stressing that the delegates need to stand strong and take action. “Be brave,” he said to the applause of the 100 delegates gathered at FIT’s Evans Library Pavilion.

Dwight D. Eisenhower founded the American Assembly process in 1950 as a way to build consensus on vital public policy issues.

The nonpartisan public forums bring together community, business and government leaders to speak freely and prioritize solutions.

This weekend’s event marked the 14th time such an assembly has been held on the lagoon’s behalf. Between 1984 and 1997, MRC conducted 13 American Assemblies for the lagoon. Themost notable outcomes included the creation of the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program and a 1990 state law that stopped sewer plants from directly discharging into the lagoon.