Date: Fri 04-Jul-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: ANDYG

Quick Words:

business-Big-Y-Kasper-A&P

Full Text:

Big Y Supermarket Is Taking Shape

(with photos)

BY ANDREW GOROSKO

The redevelopment of Newtown Shopping Center on Queen Street is moving ahead

in earnest.

Workmen this week continued constructing a Big Y supermarket on the west side

of the shopping center, redeveloping the plaza with a new anchor store to

replace the A&P supermarket which moved out in the late 1980s.

The Big Y will be almost six times the size of the A&P it replaces.

Workers used a scissors lift, excavator, and dump trucks while laboring in the

hot sun Tuesday.

The expansion project is intended to revitalize the town center through the

redevelopment of a facility which has deteriorated since A&P left the site.

The Kasper Group, the center's landlord, is doing the expansion project.

Commercial tenants which are still located in the main building at the plaza

will be relocating to the building on the south side of the property. Most of

the main building will be demolished to make way for new parking spaces.

The retail space in the main building which held the A&P will be left

standing. An extension of that structure to the north is planned.

My Place Restaurant recently received a zoning variance from the Borough

Zoning Board of Appeals to allow it to continue selling alcohol when it

relocates to the former post office at 6 Queen Street.

The board stipulated the restaurant place no signs in its windows and that it

only be allowed to sell alcohol from a service bar in the restaurant.

The restaurant needed the zoning variance because in moving into the former

post office, it will be within 300 feet of Newtown Middle School. Borough

zoning regulations prohibit alcohol sales within 300 feet of a school or

church.

Stephen B. Hurwitz, the director of real estate for Big Y Foods, Inc, of

Springfield, Mass., has said Big Y is eager to move into a new store in

Newtown.

The shopping center expansion project will more than double the enclosed space

center, bringing it up from the existing 54,000 square feet to almost 115,000

square feet. Of the 115,000 square feet, the Big Y supermarket will cover

almost 57,000 square feet.

When completed, the shopping center will have 570 parking spaces. It now has

about 300 spaces.

With the construction of a new Big Y supermarket, Newtown will have three

major food markets. Grand Union on Queen Street and Super Stop & Shop on South

Main Street are the others, already in existence.

Most residents who spoke on the shopping center redevelopment project at a

past Borough Zoning Commission public hearing voiced support for the expansion

plan. However, some said they fear an expanded shopping center will generate

more traffic on streets in the town center, especially on the heavily-traveled

Church Hill Road, posing yet more traffic congestion problems there.

"This [town center] will become a center of commerce," after Newtown Shopping

Center is expanded to about 18 tenants, according to Mr Kasper.