Developer purchases former Gardner News, Bank of America buildings with plans to renovate
GARDNER — Two more downtown properties have been sold.
The former Gardner News building and the former Bank of America building have been purchased by Tony Molina, owner of the Molina Realty Group in Hudson, who has plans to renovate the properties for mixed commercial and residential use.
“We want to build some store fronts on the first floor and apartments on the second and third floors,” said Molina of the iconic brick Gardner News building at 309 Central St.
“It’s a very good-looking building, although I think the facade was kind of abandoned for too long, and it will be nice to shine it back up and make it better utilized for the town.”
The three-story building would be renovated in such a way as to retain its current iconic appearance, Molina added.
“I want to keep it exactly the way it is, but I just want to replace the windows and clean all the bricks,” he said.
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Molina said he hopes to attract a restaurant tenant to occupy the former Bank of America building on Parker Street.
“I’m trying to lure in a steakhouse or some other kind of upscale restaurant,” Molina said.
Molina said his purchase of the two properties represented a $2.5 million investment in the downtown area. He said he anticipated that the downtown area would become an attractive location for young professionals to live and work.
“These would be people who work mostly from home, so they could dine and hang out mostly in town and support the local businesses — and that’s sort of my vision for the whole area,” he explained. “It would revive the center of town.”
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Jessica DeRoy, the city’s economic development coordinator, said the sales, which were announced during the downtown Fabulous Fall Festival event on Saturday, was “wonderful” news for the community.
“They’re both buildings that have been sitting for a little while — the Greater Gardner Chamber of Commerce was above the Bank of America, but the bottom half had been vacant for a long time – and it sounds like (Molina) was going to start renovations on the Gardner News building pretty soon, so it will be great to get that opened again,” she said. “And he’s very willing to work with the businesspeople that want to come in there and retrofit it to what their needs are, rather than retrofitting it first and finding a tenant later, which is a golden opportunity for us.”
Mayor Michael Nicholson said the sale of the two buildings, along with several other downtown properties that have changed hands in recent months, indicated that the city’s investments in the community’s infrastructure were paying off.
“When we invest in ourselves, we give people a reason to invest in us too, and that’s our return on investment, when (developers) come back and show that everything we did was worth it – and that’s exactly what we’re seeing right now,” Nicholson said. “And I think this really is going to change the face of downtown.”
This article originally appeared on Gardner News: Former Gardner News and Bank of America buildings sold to developer
