Roche Brothers will open the first downtown grocery store to serve an area that includes City Hall, the Financial District, college dorms and luxury condos, executives said this morning at the groundbreaking of the $630 million Millennium Tower project that includes redevelopment of the former Filene’s building in Boston’s Downtown Crossing.
“The deal is done,” said Millennium Partners’ Tony Pangaro, announcing a development first reported by the Herald in June. “The plan is to open mid-’15. This is not your grandfather’s supermarket. This is a new urban model for them.”
The store will be 30,000 square feet and include healthy and natural foods, prepared foods, fresh meat and fish.
It will be a “very high quality, good value, gourmet supermarket,” Pangaro said.
Yesterday, the Boston Redevelopment Authority approved $7.8 million in property tax breaks for the project, citing the need to woo office and retail tenants, which will reap the tax benefits directly over 13 years.
“It’s to attract the premier office tenant of (Arnold Worldwide and sister advertising agency Havas Media) and a premier retail tenant,” BRA spokeswoman Susan Elsbree said yesterday. “They pay the property taxes under the lease terms.”
The project will still generate $60 million in new taxes for Boston, she said.
The tax breaks are an about-face for Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who had refused such incentives for Vornado Realty Trust, the project’s former developer, which left a huge hole and stalled project in the shopping district amid the recession, before Millennium took over.
Arnold Worldwide is leasing 125,000 square feet in the former Filene’s building.
The project includes 75,000 more square feet of office space and 135,000 square feet of retail space in the Burnham building, and 95,500 square feet of retail space in Millennium Tower, which will include 450 luxury residences.
The project is the first Downtown Boston market for Roche Bros., the Wellesley-based, family-owned, 61-year-old chain of 18 mostly suburban Massachusetts supermarkets, including one in the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston.
The chain is small, but very well-respected, Mike Berger, senior editor of the Griffin Report of Food Marketing in Duxbury, told the Herald earlier this year. “(They’re) very big on fresh and perishables, quality stuff,” he said. “They really do a lot of customer services. They’ve (also) really grown in catering and prepared foods.”
A Downtown Crossing location would be a unique opportunity for the company, according to Norwell retail consultant Michael Tesler. “It gives them the opportunity to be very innovative, very creative,” he said. “It upgrades their brand and the opportunities for their brand.”
