Treble Cove Plaza

Treble Cove Plaza is the shopping center at 199 Boston Road (Route 3A) in North Billerica, in the long wedge between Boston Road and Treble Cove Road just south of the corner where the two roads meet. It opened in 1959. The ground is the low land of "Mock meadow", crossed in the old deeds by the "Mock Meadow causeway" and its ditches, and for more than a century it was part of one small farm, the Stearns homestead.

In the 1811 division of the estate of Isaac Sprake, his son Isaac received an 18-acre tillage lot by the Mock meadow road. He sold it in 1817 for $306 to Nathan Mears and Nathaniel Stearns, and in January 1823 they sold it for $300 to Nathaniel's cousins Royal Stearns, bricklayer, and Joseph Stearns Jr., laborer. That deed names no buildings, but when Royal died in 1825 his administrator advertised "one undivided half of about eighteen acres of land, Dwelling house and barn thereon standing, both nearly new, situated in Billerica west of Concord River, on the great stage road & within one hundred rods of the Canal Mills." Joseph bought his brother's half at the auction on November 28, 1825 for $400, and Royal's widow Esther released her dower to him for $100. He rounded out the farm with an 80-pole notch of Josiah B. French's land by the causeway in 1833 and two acres of Mock meadow from his cousin Nathaniel's estate in 1846. Hazen wrote in 1883 that he "now lives on the Lowell road; no children."

After his death his executor, Dudley Foster, sold "The Homestead of the late said Joseph Stearns ... containing twenty six acres more or less with a dwelling house barn & other buildings thereon" at auction on October 8, 1883 to Daniel Callahan for $3,600. The deed bounds it northerly by "Mock Meadow road" and southwesterly by "the old road" to the land of Coburn S. Smith, the same wedge that the plaza and the lot north of it fill today. Callahan added the Lynch farm to the south in 1899. In 1926 his heirs, Daniel E. Callahan, Sabina G. Twombly and Elizabeth E. Callahan, had the land registered in the Land Court as one lot running from the corner along Treble Cove Road and the State Highway down to Bridge Street, and the next day it passed to Warren A. and Bertha S. Pike. It came back to Daniel E. Callahan in 1934 and in 1939 was bought by Francois and Alphena Levesque of Dracut. Middlesex County took strips of it for the relocation of Treble Cove Road in 1933 and again in 1959.

A subdivision plan drawn for the family by Dana F. Perkins & Sons in February 1956 cut the north end of the farm into three lots. Lot 6, at the corner, kept the old Stearns house and barn. Lot 4, with 996 feet on the highway and 623 feet on Treble Cove Road, was sold to Stop & Shop, Inc. in September 1956.

In April 1959 Stop & Shop sold Lot 4 to the Billerica Realty Trust, formed the year before, and stayed on as the supermarket tenant under a lease; the F. W. Woolworth Co. had leased a store in July 1958, and the trust borrowed $500,000 from the Second Bank-State Street Trust Company. The town's Industrial Commission listed "the $700,000.00 Treble Cove Plaza shopping center" among the openings of 1959, and by 1961 the plaza was large enough to host a carnival. From the end of 1959 the trust was managed by the family behind the Carmen Development and Carmen Management corporations of Brookline, which also bought back a 200-foot frontage lot sold off in 1959. The Stop & Shop lease passed to Save-Mor Supermarkets in 1966, and CVS leased its store in 1974. In March 1986 the trust sold the plaza, replatted as Lot 22, to Dudley Trading Associates, a limited partnership of Newton, whose nominee trust still owns it.

The original building of 1959 is the western wing along Treble Cove Road. In 1987 Cherry, Webb & Touraine leased a store in "the shopping center to be known as Treble Cove Plaza Shopping Center." In September 1989 the Planning Board approved "a 57,000 sq. ft. addition," finding that "neither the site nor the existing building have any historical significance," and Market Basket leased the new supermarket of about 46,910 square feet in it: this is the southern wing, built in 1990, with a lease term from January 1, 1991. In 2004 the Board of Appeal allowed a separate Starbucks building of about 1,500 square feet with a drive-through in the parking lot at the north end. The supermarket lease passed to DSM MB I LLC, a Demoulas company, in 2014.

The first tenants were the Stop & Shop supermarket and a F. W. Woolworth store, whose lease ran until 1986. Yearbook advertisements of the 1960s add McSweeney's Liquor Store, Noble Cleaners, Mal's Department Store ("open every night 'til 10!") and Fred's Hairstylists, and later the Plaza Card & Gift Shop, a Hallmark store (1972-1987), the Billerica Formal Shop, later the Billerica Tuxedo Shop (1975-1992), and J-J Cleaners; these ads often give the plaza's address as 188 Boston Road, as late as 1987. Sav-Mor Supermarkets took over the supermarket lease in 1966, and as Purity Save-More and later Purity Supreme it was one of the town's warrant posting places from 1979 to 1986. After the 1986 sale came Cherry, Webb & Touraine (1987), Market Basket in the new south wing (1991), Spartan Paint & Supply's hardware store (1991), Crosbie's Pet Center and Papa Gino's (1992), The Paper Store and Video Thunder (1995), the Romparound play space (1996), a BankBoston branch (1997) and the Mandarin Buffet (2002). The restaurant space of the buffet became the Nana Japanese Steak House in 2008, later Triple Sushi and Nana 7. In 2013 the center, then 114,000 square feet with five empty stores, passed to KeyPoint Partners for management and leasing, and the newer tenants include Supercuts, Jo-Ann Fabrics (2013-2025), Chipotle (2015), Lowell General Hospital's urgent care, now Circle Health (2016), Hanscom Federal Credit Union and Mooyah Burgers (2017), Lincoln Liquors, Pioneer Dental, Golden Nails, Bay State Physical Therapy, the AT&T store and, in 2025-2026, V&P All Around Fitness and Frangos Chicken Fingers.

References

1. Wikipedia: Stop & Shop, which bought the plaza lot in 1956 and was the first supermarket tenant (1959)
2. Wikipedia: F. W. Woolworth Company, the plaza's first variety store tenant (lease of 1958)
3. New England Real Estate Journal: KeyPoint Partners takes over management and leasing of Treble Cove Plaza (2013)
4. New England Real Estate Journal: 9,200 sq ft Circle Health lease at Treble Cove Plaza
5. DSM Realty: Treble Cove Plaza (Market Basket building)
6. KeyPoint Partners leasing brochure with site plan and tenants (2025)
7. Market Report: tour of Market Basket, North Billerica (2025)
8. MOOYAH Burgers opens in Billerica (July 2017)

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.