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The former Kmart shopping center has a new owner and a new name — Parkade Plaza.

North Adams' Downtown Shopping Plaza Sold Again

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
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NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The former Kmart shopping plaza has changed hands again and the new owners are seeking tenants as "Parkade Plaza."
 
The 127,626 square-foot retail center was sold on June 4 for $2.6 million to Guru Realty LLC of Mendon, with listed managers Nitant Raval of Mendon and Chirag Patel of Dalton. 
 
KeyPoint Partners of Burlington is handling property management and leasing, according to a press release received on Monday. 
 
"There are number of opportunities in various sizes for a variety of uses: retail, entertainment, medical and health, personal service, and others," states Rob Grady, vice president of retail brokerage at KPP. "We're hoping to create a mix of local, regional, and national tenants that will reinvigorate the center and enhance the North Adams downtown area. We're open to all inquiries."
 
The more than seven-acre site on Main Street includes the L-shaped mall along Main and American Legion Drive and the former 93,000-square-foot Kmart building, which currently houses a Rent a Center and a Planet Fitness. 
 
Two anchors — the North Adams Cinemas and Gordman/Peebles — were shuttered in the last four years and the spaces left empty. A third, V&V Liquors, closed when the plaza was sold in February but is set to reopen under new ownership once a license is in hand. 
 
Extreme Model Railroad and Contemporary Architecture Museum, or EMRCA, which had been based in the corner of the L-shaped mall (where Sleepy's Mattress had been), moved out earlier this year. The offices had been empty of employees for months before and no one answers calls to the numbers listed on its outdated website.
 
First Hartford Realty, under then CEO Neil Ellis, purchased the property in 2005 after Kmart closed and gave it the rarely used name Steeple City Plaza. Over the years, it's also had a Staples, a Sears Hometown and an Olympia Sports. Ellis took over operation of the cinemas when previous owners ran into financial difficulties and pledged to keep them going; First Hartford also owned liquor store it opened in 2014. The L-shaped mall also has a Papa Gino's, a Label Shopper, Dollar Store, H&R Block and T-Mobile and there's a separate Burger King on the property.
 
Ellis has since retired and the plaza was sold to a realty company last year, then to DDM Property Group of West Springfield in February for $1.75 million. 
 
Keypoint manages a number of shopping plazas throughout New England, including the Center at Lenox on Route 7 that has a Kohls, Marshalls and Market 32.
 
An informational flier for prospective tenants lists more than 70,000 square feet of space available: the former Kmart garden center, the cinemas, Peebles, the Sears Hometown space and the corner space of the L-shaped mall and two smaller adjacent spaces (one had been a nail salon). 

Tags: plaza,   shopping center,   

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McCann Preparing for MSBA Roof, Windows Project

By Tammy Daniels iBerkshires Staff
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — McCann Technical School is preparing for a major overhaul of its 30-year-old roof and 60-year-old single-pane windows and will be shifting the school calendar to accommodate the project.
 
The vocational school was invited into the Massachusetts School Building Authority's accelerated repair program last fall. 
 
Superintendent James Brosnan told the School Committee on Thursday that 16 designers and engineers from Gale Associates spent three days in the school during April vacation assessing the project. 
 
"We did roof cuts, we did masonry cuts. We did all the examinations," he said. "We had sent them a tremendous amount of material ahead of time, electronically. I want to thank both [facilities manager] Gary Pierce and [CAD instructor] Greg King for having the files we could send electronically."
 
Staff also pulled the original drawings 1961-2 and from 1969 and 1974 additions, which were so brittle the crew had to take cameral images of them. 
 
"They did an awful lot of that research and an awful lot of physical evaluation to build up the recommendations," said Brosnan, who added that he and staff will go through the incoming reports and the facilities subcommittee will meet with owner's project manager LiRo-Hill, appointed by the MSBA, and Gale representatives in early June.
 
"They're going to make a presentation to the facilities group about here's where we are on the project. Here are the recommendation points. Here are the items that we can ask questions, make designs, make decisions, which way do you want to go?" said Brosnan. "At that point, they'll also have some dollar amounts, because right now we don't know, and I'm not going to guess, because that's just going to send everybody over the wrong edge."
 
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