During this deep economic slump, it would be easy for commercial property owners, tenants, lenders and community leaders to throw up their hands in resignation.
Or, they could look to the family owners of an aging strip center that is undergoing an estimated $6 million redevelopment in Manchester, which is eager to restore luster to its Broad Street retail corridor.
Levy Properties of West Hartford is revitalizing CVS Plaza, at the corner of Broad Street and Middle Turnpike West. As the name suggests, CVS will be the plaza’s largest tenant, occupying sometime this summer a new 12,900-square-foot drugstore under a 25-year lease, said principal Matthew Levy.
Levy’s family purchased the property 20 years ago when a thriving discount store anchored the plaza, bracketed by a D’Angelo’s sandwich shop, a doctor’s office and a branch of Savings Bank of Manchester.
Levy Properties demolished one wing of the strip center, which at one time housed a Dollar Dreams, to erect the CVS store and a larger, 2,245-square-foot prototype replacement for the Dunkin’ Donuts store that was there. When completed, the plaza will have about 46,000 square feet of retail.
Also bustling two decades ago was the stretch of Broad Street, between Center Street and Middle Turnpike West, fronting the plaza. Just down the road, the Manchester Parkade once brimmed with department stores and shops.
Then, The Shoppes at Buckland Hills — known then as the Buckland Hills Mall — opened. Broad Street was never the same as shoppers flocked to the mall and Broad Street’s merchants withered, Manchester Mayor Louis Spadaccini said.
Spadaccini points today to the revitalized CVS Plaza as a sign of Broad Street’s potential rebirth.
“The area has been a longstanding redevelopment challenge for the town,’’ Spadaccini said. “We’re glad to see it.’’
Manchester has recently expanded from five seats to 12 seats membership on a blue-ribbon panel assigned to devise a redevelopment strategy for Broad Street. Members include those with backgrounds in law, real estate and architecture.
Spadaccini said the ideal would be to transform “underutilized properties’’ on both sides of the Broad Street commercial district into a blended use of retail, offices and housing. One opportunity, in particular, the mayor said, is to expand the burgeoning medical base springing from Manchester Hospital to Broad Street.
Levy Properties may be able to help there, too. Just down Broad Street from CVS Plaza, the Levy family owns a shopping center that was once home to a Big Lot discount store. Levy Properties has ideas for rejuvenating that site as well, including expanding it for medical use and other retail, Matthew Levy said.
The family’s plans ring a bell with banker John Patrick, who recalls frequent shopping trips on Broad Street and the shopping center growing up in East Hartford.
Patrick, chairman of Farmington Savings Bank, said his long relationship with the Levy family, along with signed tenants who supported a strong cash flow for the property, is the chief reason his bank was willing to finance the plaza revitalization.
“While we’re hearing all this gloom and doom,’’ Patrick said, “there are companies that are looking to grow in markets where they are doing well.’’
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Hartford Hospital expands
Hartford Hospital has enlarged its Woman’s Life Center department at The Rutherford of Blue Back Square, 65 Memorial Road, in West Hartford.
The fourth-floor women’s health office doubled its space to 3,700 square feet. Hartford Hospital now leases at total of just under 42,000 square feet in The Rutherford.
Jones Lang LaSalle represented landlord Blue Back Square LLC. OR&L Commercial represented Hartford Hospital.
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Greg Seay is the Hartford Business Journal Web editor.