City Council takes step to transform former factory into bustling business

By Owen Boss

GARDNER — The City Council passed a motion Monday night that designated the former Nichols & Stone factory site as a “development overlay district,” the first of several steps toward turning what would otherwise become another abandoned factory into a 120,000-square-foot retail establishment that would generate 200 full- and part-time jobs. The decision to designate the property as a development overlay district came following a Public Welfare Committee meeting last week in which Robert Hubbard, the city’s director of planning and development, stressed the importance of working with the Atlantic Development Corp. and acting quickly so as to avoid having another dilapidated former factory building in the city. Thomas Godfrey, a representative from Atlantic Development was on hand at the meeting, and said that although the project is still in its preliminary stages, the conceptual work has already begun. “We have been working with the city for months now and this was a very important event for us,” said Mr. Godfrey. “Conceptually we are looking at roughly the same numbers that (Mr. Hubbard) spoke about. This is going to be a fairly large shopping center, roughly about 125,000 square feet on the Nichols & Stone property.” According to Mr. Godfrey, a future building would be constructed in such a way so that it could accommodate either one large shopping center or many separate businesses. “This building is going to be designed so that it could accommodate one user or even three or four smaller users. In this kind of environment we would look for one anchor tenant that would make everything work. The key to solidifying this project is to plant one anchor tenant to attract and support the other businesses.” Although the plans are far from finalized, and the business that will exist on the property in the future remains unknown, several councilors at the meeting were encouraged with the progress that has been made. Councilor Scott Graves said that he was glad to see Mr. Godfrey in attendance at the meeting, and looked forward to the development of the project site. “I want to thank Tom Godfrey for being here tonight from the Atlantic Development Corp. and his attorney Mark Goldstein — their being here shows that they are sincere about doing something about putting an operation at Nichols & Stone,” said Mr. Graves. “I’m just happy and excited about the fact that it looked like we would have a big huge hole there like in some other areas of the city.” Mr. Graves added that he thought that the site would definitely attract other businesses to the area. Also encouraged with the amount of progress that had been made in terms of site development was Councilor Henry Ares, who said he had seen firsthand what can happen when a former factory location is allowed to become an eyesore, and worried that if left unattended, the site could become a potential fire hazard. oboss@thegardnernews.com

Appeared on Page 1 on 7/8/2008 (Vol. 206 No. 160)