Towne Plaza

Towne Plaza is the Market Basket shopping center on the northeast side of Boston Road (Route 3A) at 700 Boston Road, near Pinehurst. It was begun in 1964 by Telemachus A. and George A. Demoulas of the DeMoulas supermarket chain, who did business as the "Towne Shopping Center," and it is still owned by the family's company. The plaza stands on what was for more than a century one farm on "the main road," shown as the J. B. Gleason place on the 1853 map of Billerica.

In 1844 Josiah B. Gleason, yeoman, bought "the Homestead Farm of Sereno Fiske" on "the great Boston road" for $1,480, although the bounds of that deed run back toward the Lexington road and may describe land across the road. By 1857 Gleason's "homestead farm" was 68 3/4 acres on the northeast side of the main road, running back to "the back road," with an 18 1/4-acre lot across the way. He sold it that October to Warren W. Marshall of Salem for $5,000, and while he stayed on until April 1858 he agreed to make good any fire loss: $500 on "the dwelling house," $300 on "the barn" and $100 on "the carriage & wood house, granary & shed." Marshall sold the farm in 1871 to Michael Cahill of Bedford for $5,000. After Cahill's death his widow, Bridget, sold "the 'Homestead Farm' of the late Michael Cahill" at auction in 1873 to Benjamin E. Spalding, the highest bidder at $5,500. In 1884 the farm was put in the name of his wife, Susan J. Spalding, and in 1909 her administrator sold it to Burton C. Pasho for $4,866, less a lot sold to Grace Knight Babson and a strip sold in 1901 to the Lowell and Boston Street Railway.

Ernest Drew bought "all the lands on the northeasterly side of said road" from Pasho's estate in 1915 for $6,000, "with the buildings thereon." The County Commissioners took two strips in 1916 when Boston Road was relocated, and in 1917 Drew sold the 45 acres to Jeremiah J. Hurley of Boston. The Hurley family held the land for nearly fifty years and farmed it. In 1932 Jeremiah and Catherine Hurley mortgaged it to the Federal Land Bank of Springfield, the federal farm-loan bank, and in 1950, after his death, Catherine renewed the loan on the 44-acre farm "with the buildings thereon," promising "to work said premises in a good and husbandlike manner." A plan drawn for the family in 1954 and revised in 1956 divided it into Lots A, B and C beside the new Riverdale house lots. In December 1956 the 31-acre Lot C was sold to Burlington Realty Trust, a real estate trust of Belmont, while the family kept the two small lots with the old buildings on Boston Road; Lot B was then used as "a roadside fruit and vegetable stand and real estate broker's office." The Hurleys ran a dairy farm here, and by local recollection their barn housed George's Auction Barn, run by the auctioneer George Kender in the 1950s and early 1960s. It advertised in the Boston Globe as being on "Rt. 3, Billerica" (the old Route 3, later 3A): in September 1954 it held three nights of sales of "300 oil paintings and antiques" from an estate in Framingham, and in July 1961, now at "Route 3A, Billerica," it auctioned the "contents of 32 lots" of storage merchandise, "continuing until everything is sold." At Christmas 1962 the barn's personnel and customers gave $901 to the Globe Santa fund, and they gave again in 1963.

The town's Industrial Commission reported in 1964 that "DeMoulas' of Lowell has started a project on Boston Road and tentative plans call for the construction of twenty (20) stores," and the 1965 Town Meeting was asked to build a sidewalk "on Boston Road from Allen Road to the Demoulas Shopping Center." On October 16, 1964 the Demoulas brothers, as "co-partners doing business as Towne Shopping Center," bought Lot C, about 30 acres, from Burlington Realty Trust, and Lots A and B "with the buildings thereon" from a trust that had bought them from the family in 1961. In January 1965 they put the land in the Towne Shopping Center Realty Trust. Three more units were begun in 1965, construction of "a large department store" started in 1968, and in 1969 "a large addition was added to the Towne Plaza Shopping Center." The department store was W. T. Grant's, later Grant City, which advertised at the plaza until the chain failed in 1975-1976. Other early tenants included Towne Plaza Drug (from 1966), the Billerica Sports Center, Merri Lane, Anthony's Styling Shop, Shoe Village, Towne Liquors and Flynn Travel, and in the 1980s a JCPenney Catalog Outlet Store and the Hungry Tiger restaurant, which is still there.

The DeMoulas supermarket was the anchor from the start, and from 1980 the store was one of the town's posting places for Town Meeting warrants, listed as "DeMoulas Market, Town Plaza" and later "Market Basket, Towne Plaza." The family's real estate company, Valley Properties, Inc., traces its title through the 1965 trust and a 1974 merger. It bought back a 2.9-acre corner lot in 1976 for $50,000 and added the neighboring lot at 718 Boston Road in 1994. In January 1994 the Planning Board approved a 33,576-square-foot addition, noting that "neither the site nor the existing building have any historical significance."

In December 2014 Valley Properties transferred the plaza, its "Store #7," to Valley MB LLC, an affiliate of Demoulas Super Markets. When Market Basket closed its Billerica Mall store in June 2022 it said it would remodel and expand the store at 700 Boston Road, and in 2024 the Planning Board approved the site work for the "Market Basket Expansion." The same year Burlington, an anchor of the Billerica Mall since 1994, leased 33,995 square feet in "the shopping center known as Towne Plaza." DSM Realty, the Demoulas real estate office, lists the plaza at 219,218 square feet with Market Basket, Burlington and Five Below as anchors.

References

1. DSM Realty: Towne Plaza, 700 Boston Road (219,218 sq ft, 1,113 parking spaces; tenant list), 2026
2. Burlington store page, 700 Boston Road, Billerica
3. CBS Boston, June 2022: Market Basket closing its Billerica Mall store and planning to remodel and expand the store at 700 Boston Road
4. Wikipedia: W. T. Grant, the chain that ran the plaza department store (Grant City) until its 1975-1976 liquidation
5. Boston Globe, Sept. 19, 1954, p. 119: advertisement for George's Auction Barn, Rt. 3, Billerica (oil paintings and antiques from an estate in Framingham)
6. Boston Globe, Dec. 24, 1962, p. 4: photograph, $901 Globe Santa donation from George's Auction Barn; owner George Kender
7. Boston Globe, Dec. 25, 1963, p. 46: Globe Santa donor list including George's Auction Barn, Billerica

Title References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted; Probate # is a Middlesex probate case, Ctf a Land Court certificate of title.