Steady Progress at Pleasant Street Site

A small crowd of local residents stood peering over the chain-link fence on Pleasant Street Monday afternoon, watching as the basement of the continued to take shape.

Late last month, in spite of wet weather and freezing temperatures, a crew from the Lynn-based Meninno Construction Inc. used a pair of backhoes to dig out and reinforce a 14-foot hole for the building's roughly 1,800-square-foot basement.

Now, work has begun on the basement itself. Over the last few days, truckloads of concrete have been transported to the site, the latest step in an effort to erect a new 38,000-square-foot bricked office and retail building.

The building is being operated by the Warwick Realty Trust and will occupy the space where and several surrounding buildings used to be.

When the building was in the spring, the most prominent prospective tenant was a new movie house with two 100-seat theaters for which the is trying to raise more than $1 million to build.

The building is also designed to include a restaurant, although no restaurant operator has been identified.

The design calls for a largely brick building with the three-story portion being near the and the one-story portion being closer to Anderson Street.

The latest design features more set-backs for the upper floors, the use of more glass and may be powered by geothermal energy and solar panels on the roof.