Target Will Open At Roche Brothers Location In Burlington

BURLINGTON, MA -- Target confirmed Monday it will open a store at the site of the Roche Brothers grocery store in the Burlington Crossroads shopping plaza. The announcement comes after the retail giant told Burlington Patch on Wednesday that had no plans to open a store in Burlington. The new store will be a small-format store, similar to the one the company operates at the Redstone Shopping Plaza in Stoneham.

The store is expected to open in October of next year, along with another small-format Target in Cambridge. When contacted last week by Burlington Patch, the only stores Target would confirm that is opening locally were a new Roslindale store, which is opening in March, and a new Medford store, which will open in July.

Roche Brothers employees were told in October that the store would close when the current lease expired December 9. The company said the store had suffered from sluggish sales -- undoubtedly caused in part by the Wegman's store that opened in Burlington three years ago. The Roche Brothers has anchored the Burlington Crossroads shopping plaza on Cambridge Street since opening in 2001.

The store closing comes as Roche Brothers announced the opening of a new "Brothers Marketplace" store in Waltham next spring. The next closest Roche Brothers store to Burlington is in Acton, which the company opened in 1995. The company said it would continue to offer catering and delivery services in the Burlington area.

Subscribe to Burlington Patch for more local news and real-time alerts.

Photo by Target.

Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).