Restaurants, Bank on Outlets Site Given Green Light

Plans to construct a drive-up bank and a building slated to hold three eating establishments were given the Planning Board's nod of approval Tuesday night.

The project, , seeks to construct the two buildings on a lower pad site on Premium Outlets Boulevard – the road that travels up to

The Thurloe Kensington Corp., bought the land from the Simon/Premium Outlets group and developer Rich Landry is hoping, with Tuesday night's vote in favor of the project, to start construction by June, said Gordon Leedy, the engineer from Vanasse Hangen Brustlin who has been working with Landry on the project.

The site would be home to a building with a 70-seat, 2,514 square foot restaurant; a 70-seat, 2,906 square-foot restaurant and a 50-seat, 1,765 square foot restaurant with drive-thru window, and a 4,515 square-foot bank.

Last month the board granted four waivers on the project, including one for the number of parking spaces required at the site, as long as the applicant came back to the board with improved plans for parking and access to and from the site.

the board said the plans were much improved, but they still had their concerns about what would happen at the intersection of the site and Premium Outlets Boulevard.

Planning Board Chairman Bob Best said Wednesday evening that the final piece that really needed to fit into place was satisfying those concerns. There had been concern from day one that the layout of the restaurants and bank site, and the expected amount of traffic, would create headaches and unintended safety issues in terms of people trying to turn out of the pad site, particularly taking a left.

Best said Leedy and Landry brought a traffic expert with them to Tuesday night's meeting who said the intersection, would not have a problem handling the expected traffic.

“For me that gave me a comfort level that traffic could be handled coming in and out of that site on a regular basis,” Best said of the engineer's review.

At the board's last meeting, at the beginning of May, members asked the applicant to dig up some information about similar intersections in town to help give a visual of what could be expected. Best said an example given was the south Shaw's plaza, where people enter and exit on and off of Continental Boulevard near Pizzico. Best said the trips in and out of the plaza and the traffic on Continental Boulevard in that area are projected to be similar to what's expected long term, after the excitement of the June 14-17, dies down.

Best said between that and a little further tweaking they did of the on-site layout to add more queue space for cars, he thought the applicant did a good job responding to all the board's concerns over the last few weeks.

The project was approved by all but Dr. John Segedy who voted against final approval of the project on Tuesday night.

Leedy said the board was receptive to traffic information provided, and by passing the project, Landry will be able to  get started just as soon as he closes on the land. The driveway cut for the property was already completed, so it wouldn't require tearing up the newly-constructed Premium Outlets Boulevard once the stores are open.

Leedy said Landry would like to have construction underway by sometime in June.

“This is all a big dance because, of course, we want to avoid any negative impact up there with the opening.”

Leedy said a project like this generally takes about six months, so these newest additions to the Outlets site could be before the end of the year.

Leedy neither he nor Landry could disclose the names of the restaurants planning to come in until a lease has been worked out. It has been noted that one shop is to be a coffee shop, one a pizza and sub shop and the third is still unknown. The bank also cannot be identified until lease is buttoned up.

He expected that information might be available in the next two weeks.

The pad site is one of two sites that sit lower than the actual Outlet center, on Premium Outlets Boulevard. The lowest site is the future home of a 200-room hotel and four restaurants as part of a later phase of the Outlets project.

The Merrimack Premium Outlets will be home to 100 designer and brand-name outlets including J. Crew, Bloomingdale's Outlet, Sak's Fifth Avenue Off 5th, Nike, Ann Taylor, Coach and more.

A ribbon cutting and grand opening ceremony are scheduled for June 14 and the festivities will continue through June 17.