RUMFORD – The final documents for the sale of the Abbott Farm Plaza to a Massachusetts and Maine retailing firm were signed at 4 p.m. Monday.
Town Manager Steve Eldridge said the closing means the former shopping center will return to the tax rolls next year.
“I’m excited to get it off from the plate and to move forward,” he said. “This is an incremental shift to the positive.”
With Monday’s signing, two of the town’s major building complexes have been sold within the past couple of weeks. The former Thurston mill was sold by the River Valley Growth Council to Dixfield businessman and entrepreneur Clinton Bradbury late last month.
Abbott Farm Plaza was sold to Strategic Retail Advisers of Framingham, Mass., doing business as Rumford Realty Partnership LLC, at a cost of $220,000. The firm also agreed to pay the cost of an appraisal of the building complex.
Eldridge said the $70,000 property taxes paid annually to the town is expected to decline once the appraisal is complete. The current value of the buildings and land is $2.4 million.
About eight acres of the nearly 80-acre parcel goes with the building complex. Eldridge said the firm is looking into the possibility of buying the back acreage from the town, as well.
He said renovation of the former site of Androscoggin Home Care and Hospice is expected to begin within a couple of weeks. That space will be used to house a branch of the national chain Dollar Tree. He said the new owners are currently talking with several larger retail businesses that may be interested in locating to the site.
The former owners of the complex, Druker Corp. of Massachusetts, donated the building and land to the town late last year. It had been vacant or virtually vacant for nearly two years once the Ames Department Store chain went bankrupt.
Prior to the successful sale of the complex, another Massachusetts businessman, Peter Hatzis, had put in a proposal. That deal fell through in January when he failed to meet some of the specifications laid out by the Board of Selectmen.
“There are a lot of changes and positive things going on,” Eldridge said.
Comments are no longer available on this story