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Staying close to homeStop & Shop looking to buy landmark Quincy center bank QUINCY - Stop & Shop Supermarket Co. is negotiating to buy the landmark Granite Trust Building in Quincy Center in a deal that could become a key part of downtown redevelopment efforts, sources said. The property is owned by Quincy Mutual Fire Insurance Co., which bought the bank property and a parking lot across the street last year. That parking lot, located behind a hair salon on Hancock Street, is not expected to be part of any deal to sell the bank building. Stop & Shop spokeswoman Faith Weiner would neither confirm nor deny that the company is in talks to buy the building. Quincy Mutual CEO Douglas Briggs could not be reached for comment yesterday.
It’s not clear how close the deal is to being finalized, but sources said talks are progressing relatively smoothly. Merchants in the building and the attached storefronts have been sent letters asking them to confirm their lease status. Those letters are being forwarded from the building’s management company to Stop & Shop, tenants said. If the deal goes through, it could mark a double win for city officials working on plans to revitalize Quincy Center. Stop & Shop is currently downtown Quincy’s largest corporate employer, with more than 800 workers, and city officials have been trying to convince the company to stay since executives decided last year that they needed to expand the company’s office space. Buying the Granite Trust building would essentially mean the company is committed to staying downtown and would also pave the way to expanding a property long seen as holding the most development potential in the downtown area. Aside from the bank tower, the property includes the one-story storefronts that stretch from the bank building to Cottage Avenue and all the land in between. City officials and developers have long suggested building atop the storefronts on the Hancock Street side of the building. Such a possibility was one reason that drove changes to downtown zoning rules approved this year to allow taller buildings in the downtown area. The new limit is 15 stories, but officials have said that it’s doubtful that any structure in the immediate area of the bank building would rise higher than the tower, which was built in 1929 and still downtown’s most visible landmark. Several officials, including Mayor William Phelan, refused to comment on the possible sale of the building yesterday. Stop & Shop, which is a subsidiary of Dutch conglomerate Royal Ahold, has been looking at sites around the South Shore for a new corporate headquarters. The company occupies 225,000 square feet of office space at its downtown headquarters and is looking to add as much as 200,000 square feet to consolidate corporate offices scattered throughout the region. Ahold does about 70 percent of its business in the United States. In addition to Stop & Shop and Giant-Landover, it operates the Pennsylvania-based Giant-Carlisle chain, Williamsville, N.Y.-based Tops supermarkets and U.S. Foodservice, a institutional catering division in Columbia, Md. Stop & Shop operates 363 supermarkets in the Northeast.
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The supermarket giant is seeking to buy the historic 10-story bank tower, several connected storefronts and a parking lot across the street from its current Hancock Street corporate headquarters with an eye toward a major development project, multiple sources with knowledge of the negotiations confirmed.