The huge Burlington store in Capital Shopping Center would turn into four smaller stores under the latest proposal to rework the six-decade-old plaza on Storrs Street.
“For the last five years, we have known that Burlington … that they’ve wanted to downsize. We’ve been working with them … but we haven’t been able to facilitate it until we had a viable plan for the remainder. We have a plan now,” said Marc Newman, vice president of Brixmor Capitol, which owns the shopping center.
Under a proposal presented by Newman on Wednesday to the Concord Zoning Board, the 77,000-square-foot Burlington store, formerly Burlington Coat Factory, would be reduced to 23,000 square feet, freeing up space for three other retail shops. “We don’t think the space is viable anymore as a 77,000-square-foot box,” Newman said.
The specific tenants were not named but would be selling goods and not services, he said.
Burlington is in the process of reworking its national presence, shrinking most of its existing stores around the country while opening new stores in a smaller footprint.
The city’s Zoning Board unanimously approved several variances Wednesday, allowing more signs and fewer parking spaces. They rejected one variance to allow a sign that would rise above the building’s flat roof because of concern that it would set a precedent.
Under the proposal presented Wednesday, a space of 23,000 square feet would be available on the back side of the building, facing I-93. Newman said this space is a tough sell because it’s not easily visible from the Storrs Street parking area. A gym was slated to lease the space but has backed out, and no tenant is signed up at the moment, he said.
Much of the discussion Wednesday concerned the size and location of signs, because the existing signs for Burlington would be replaced by as many as five different signs for the other stores on the front of the building and five on the rear, with more on each side of the building to help lure people to whatever business ends up on the rear.
The proposal includes a small, 2,800-square-foot addition to create a loading dock for the business in the back of the building and would remove some parking spaces behind and to the side of the shopping center, perhaps including some that are leased to the New Hampshire Chamber of Commerce.
“This is an evolution. We’ve looked at a lot of things and we think this is the best we can do,” said Newman. “It’s like a lot of shopping centers in other parts of the country – that have big parking lots that don’t get properly utilized and, frankly, that’s not what the direction is, these days.”
Capitol Shopping Center was built in the early 1960s. It replaced the Concord Railroad Depot, a huge brick building that fell into disrepair after passenger rail stopped coming to the city.
The first expansion in decades happened two years ago when a stand-alone Starbucks and a small restaurant and retailer building were built.
Concord’s long-term hopes for the area, called the Opportunity Corridor Performance district, is for a mix of multi-story retail, service and housing that would be more pedestrian-friendly and less dependent on cars.