In designing the center the primary concerns were that 1) appropriate sized buildings were
provided for the projected uses, 2) the stores were visually and physically accessible to both
pedestrians and cars. These primary concerns were balanced with efforts to identify an
appropriate place for a commemorative plaza and address the potential concerns of surrounding
uses.
The resulting design places the shopping center at the back of the site. This allows the loading
dock to be located near other mill loading docks on French Street, and the entrance to be both
visible from the street and easily accessible from Broadway, the parking lot and other stores. At
45,000 square feet, the building provides for typical midsized grocery stores. There is room on
the site to widen the building, but the low rent projected for the anchor tenant precludes such an
increase.
Discussions with retailers and observation indicated that inline retail is ideally between 50 and 80
feet deep, with that in mind the inline retail building on the site has depths of both 80 and 50 feet.
The deepest section of the building is on Broadway—the high value location—and the shallowest
section is on Stamford Street.
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Anchor
45,000 sf
Inline
22,760 sf
The approach is similar regarding the
pharmacy pad, and requires less defense as it is
a common location for a pad use. The most
important consideration was that the drivethrough be located such that a line of cars
would not back out into Broadway. Ideally the
entrance to the building would be on the
southern edge of the building—providing equal
access from the street and parking lot.
BROADWAY
Pharmacy
13,440 sf
The inline retail is located at the front of the site. This poses several challenges which we believe
are justified by the nature of the site and the needs of the surrounding community. The first
challenge is that it is not possible to provide a covered walkway between the inline retail and the
anchor tenant. The second is that inline stores must have two doors or sacrifice access from the
street or the parking lot, which is difficult given security, loading and back-room needs.
However, placing all of the inline retail at the back of the site would not be possible without
stretching some of it along the bottom or top edge of the site. This would close off visibility to
the fragile small-scale retail and hamper vehicular access from side streets. Additionally, as
mentioned, over a third of the households of the identified trade area do not have a car. To
compete successfully for their patronage store fronts must be in close proximity to their daily
movements up and down Broadway. Most importantly, as mentioned in the zoning section, the
project will not be built as-of-right and will
require review in Methuen and Lawrence.
Because these cities envision a revitalized
Broadway as a whole, they will seek to create a
shopping center that fits in with the character
of the surrounding pedestrian oriented
environment. In sum, by pulling the inline
retail to the front of the site and completing the
pedestrian environment on Broadway we lower
the entitlement risk for the project.