New York state grocery legend Wegmans is coming to Burlington. Yeah, it's better than Market Basket.
Chances are you have never been to a Wegmans. Unless you are from upstate New York or have friends or family there, you probably have no idea what it is. I certainly didn’t until going to college in western Pennsylvania. No Wegmans there, either, but I did have a friend from New York who talked so much about the place we had no choice but to ridicule him constantly for it.
After all, it’s only a grocery store.
I was young and I did not yet understand the emotional attachment that some people have to stores. It’s not a stretch to say that Wegmans has a cult following, and judging by local reports of the first Wegmans in New England recently opening in Northboro, it appears to be well-deserved. More services than Roche Brothers and with lower prices, Wegmans — a family-owned grocery store chain — has done what the DeMoulas family couldn’t: create a phenomenon.
That phenomenon is coming to Burlington in 2013. According to a Globe story, Nordblom Company is developing a parcel that will include a Wegmans grocery store and several locally-owned restaurants. These will not be down-market mall-town chain eateries, either, says the developer:
“We want the focus to be on getting the best operators, so we’re talking to independent and chef-driven restaurants, as opposed to chains,’’ said Todd Fremont-Smith, senior vice president of development. “We believe that’s what the market wants: something more experience-based than just a shopping center with a large food court.’’
Sounds nice, right? When was the last time you saw a quote anything like this about a development in Billerica?
The project will be part of Northwest Park, currently a forest of old office parks and parking lots along Middlesex Turnpike. You have probably driven by the site of Northwest Park hundreds of times on your way to Burlington Mall and thought nothing of it. And why would you? There’s nothing there worth seeing right now. But Burlington is trying to turn this neighborhood into a large, mixed-use alternative to the office park and retail disasters that sprawl built. The Wegmans is among the first real proposals that follow that plan. (By the way, Newton is getting one, too.)
I wrote in a Minuteman column two years ago that the Iverson Ford site should be converted to big farmer’s market and that Billerica should become a food mecca. Burlington has beat us to the punch.
That we failed to land Wegmans is a loss, but if we never even tried to get the legendary grocer, that would be an even bigger loss. This is exactly the sort of economic development we should be going after. Wegmans would have been perfect off one of the Route 3 exits. Imagine the economic growth it would have spurred, not to mention giving us a second grocery choice beyond the three moribund Market Baskets we have.
It’s nice that we are attracting high tech companies like E-Ink (albeit with boffo tax breaks) and are going after biotech to shore up the sinking industrial space hidden away in the backstage areas of our giant town. The Assessing Deparement gets credit for that. But how long is it going to be until we get some development in here we can actually use?
