CONWAY — Nearly two years after receiving conditional approval from the Conway PlanningBoard, developers announced late last week that work has commenced on the Tractor Supply Co.store on the North-South Road in North Conway.

The 19,028-square-foot, one-story store will be located just north of the PetSmart store and accessed offthe northernmost roundabout offthe North-South Road.

That roundabout also provides access to to Settlers Green and the yet-to-open Market Basket. Bulldozers and other heavy equipment could be seen and heard out at the construction site this week.

“Our goal is to have the new North Conway Tractor Supply store open by late this year or the first quarter of 2024. But this is New England and you never know with the weather,” said developer Mathew J. Halprin of Conway Development Partners, LLC of Wethersfield, Conn.

The project was conditionally approved by the planning board prior to the town’s one-yearmoratorium approved by voters last April on commercial projects exceeding 50,000 square feet andon new hotels and is therefore not impacted by the moratorium.

According to the Conway town assessing office, Conway Development Partners on June 16 purchased the 10.44-acre site for $2.4 million from Fairway Nominee Trust/the Joseph R. MullinsTrust of Boston, Mass., and is leasing 4 acres longterm to Tractor Supply.

The general contractor is W.R. Newman of Nashville, Tenn., a company that is used by TractorSupply for its store construction, according to Halprin.

He said the delays in the project after first obtaining conditional approval two years ago were partlydue to resolving utility connection issues and the need to get the roundabout built to provideaccess and egress. That roundabout, the third on the North-South Road, opened last fall.

“When a company like Tractor Supply leases something you’re talking about a long-term lease of40 years so these issues have to be well planned and worked out,” said Halprin, who added, “Thetown has been great to work with. Your town engineer (town engineer/deputy town manager PaulDegliAngeli) is one of the best I have ever dealt with; he’s really on top of his game and does a greatjob.”

The site received conditional subdivisional approval from the planning board in February 2021 andreceived final approval in May of this year. It was subdivided into the 4.2-acre lot for the TractorSupply store and another 6.24-acre lot, with plans for the second lot not yet announced, accordingto Halprin.

“We’re working on that,” said Halprin.

He said this will be Tractor Supply’s 21st store in New Hampshire.

Based in Nashville Tenn., Tractor Supply has more than 2,150 stores nationally and is the largestrural lifestyle retail store chain in the United States.

Conway Development Partners, Halprin said, is a division of New England Retail Properties, Inc.which was founded in 1987 as a shopping center brokerage and development company. They havebeen involved in more than 65 Tractor Supply stores expansion in New England and New YorkState.

Conway Development Partners received a one-year extension of its original conditional approval inAugust 2022.

The commencement of construction follows the June 27 signing of an easement agreementbetween Conway Development Partners and Conway selectmen concerning access to the propertyoffthe North-South Road via the roundabout.

“The driveway for the property offthe (new) roundabout comes across town-owned land so theircounsel wanted the agreement,” DegliAngeli told selectmen at their June 27 meeting.

Selectmen chair Mary Carey Seavey, vice chair Carl Thibodeau and selectmen John Colbath, StevePorter and Ryan Shepard signed the easement. Halprin had signed the agreement June 8 forConway Development Partners LLC.

Access to the property will be via a curb cut offthe North-South Road south of the thirdroundabout. Egress, however, will only be offthe driveway to the third roundabout, DegliAngeli said.

Because it was a two-lot subdivision, with both lots owned by the developers, DegliAngeli saudthey also retain the option to have access offHemlock Lane once the developers decide what theywant to do with the other parcel.

“We are not ready to announce what those plans are but we are working on it,” Halprin told theSun.

Halprin worked with Matt Darling of Palm Coast Capital to obtain all the entitlements on the project,he said.

In his appearances before the planning board in 2021 concerning the project, Darling told the boardand then town attorney Peter Malia that Tractor Supply did not want the site without having thethird roundabout built.

As for when Market Basket is expected to open, Settlers Green developer Robert Barsamian toldthe Sun that his latest expectation is September, once a switchgear arrives as he said the 70,000-square-foot store is otherwise completed except for the delivery of foodstuffs once the switchgearis installed that will coordinate the store’s electrical refrigeration systems.

For further information contact Halprinm@newenglandretail.com.

Tom Eastman
Reporter

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