March 28, 2024
Business

Ames stores prepare for new tenants Shaw’s, Stop & Shop, Marden’s acquire lease rights in Maine

SOUTH PORTLAND – Many of those empty Ames department stores across the state could soon have new tenants selling groceries, sporting goods and discount merchandise.

Two supermarket chains, a national sporting goods retailer and Lewiston-based Marden’s Surplus & Salvage have acquired the lease rights to eight empty Ames stores. Twenty Ames stores closed down in Maine when the Connecticut-based chain went bankrupt earlier this year.

The Stop & Shop Supermarket Co., based in Quincy, Mass., has acquired the lease rights to the former Ames stores in Orono and Waterville. Shaw’s Supermarkets, based in West Bridgewater, Mass., has acquired the rights to stores in Saco, Wiscasset, Lewiston and Falmouth, and is working on the rights to the one in Sanford.

According to court records, Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc. of Pittsburgh won the South Portland Ames store’s lease with a $3.2 million bid. And Marden’s won the lease to the Ames store in Calais.

The interest in those vacant stores is good news in many communities, where Ames often served as an anchor store in shopping strip malls. Ames employed more than 1,000 people statewide when it closed.

Steve Bauman of CB Richard Ellis/The Boulos Co., a Portland-based property management and development company, said there will always be retailers ready to fill empty space in prosperous areas.

“Primary locations are going to be filled relatively easily,” Bauman said. “But in the secondary locations, in northern Maine, it’s going to be a challenge to get the big boxes or what have you.”

If Stop & Shop opens supermarkets in the Orono and Waterville sites, it will mark the chain’s entry into Maine. Shaw’s and Hannaford Brothers are the dominant supermarket chains in the state.

Stop & Shop, which has 335 stores throughout southern New England, New York and New Jersey, in December acquired 17 Ames’ leases in New England, including the two in Maine, and one lease in Virginia.

Charles Thermaikos, a grocery chain analyst with McDonald Investments in Cleveland, Ohio, said acquiring leases is a “tried and true” way for companies to enter into new markets.

“I would guess most of them would end up being Stop & Shop stores,” Thermaikos said. “Will all 18? Possibly, but it may be less than that. You really have to let the thing play itself out.”

Dick’s Sporting Goods is a publicly traded company with 141 stores in 25 states. It has stores in Massachusetts, Vermont and Connecticut, but none in Maine.


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