AUBURN – Developer George Schott, former owner of the Auburn Plaza on Center Street, said he expects the Mount Auburn area will grow as a retail center, and he wants to be in on the ground floor.
“Plus I got bored,” he said with a laugh, referring to the sale of his Auburn Plaza in 2003.
Schott got the green light from the Planning Board earlier this month for Mount Auburn Plaza, a 14-acre development at Mount Auburn Avenue and Turner Street. Plans call for seven businesses, a mixture of sit-down and drive-through restaurants, office space and retail.
The plans show seven pads for buildings and 585 parking spaces. The buildings range in size from 3,500 square feet to 12,500 square feet. Schott is negotiating with a fast-food restaurant and a bank for two of the sites.
He has also been negotiating with two national restaurant chains for months. He expects to make announcements soon confirming their intent to come to Mount Auburn Plaza.
If successful, the two restaurants will occupy one 6,500-square-foot building and a 7,000-square-foot building along the Turner Street side of the complex.
Schott expects to develop the project in three phases. The first phase would include the road work, utilities, drainage, wetland mitigation areas and buffers, as well as the pads for the first three buildings. The budget for the first phase is $1.6 million, not including the cost of the buildings.
The second and third phases would be developed as tenants are secured for the other sites.
Phase one is scheduled to begin soon and be finished by fall. A number of road improvements have been proposed for the development, including the creation of additional turning lanes on Turner Street and an additional eastbound travel lane on Mount Auburn Avenue.
The entrance to the new plaza would be directly across from the entrance to Whiteholm Plaza and the Wal-Mart Supercenter.
The plans, which were submitted to the board by Technical Services Inc. of Turner, also call for maintaining the large pine trees along the Dewey Street side of the parcel. Gaps in that tree line will be filled in with smaller pines transplanted from other parts of the plaza so that residential neighbors will be screened from the complex.
That area has seen considerable retail interest over the past year. Aside from the Mount Auburn Plaza, a new Starbucks coffee shop and Lamey-Wellehan store are going in near that intersection. A six-acre retail development is planned near the entrance of Lowe’s, which opened in January.
Schott also owns the original Wal-Mart building in that neighborhood and has been negotiating with prospective tenants for it.
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