Reading officials considering alcohol store license for plaza

The move comes six months after Atlantic owner Arnold Rubin closed the Haven Street grocery store, considered by many Reading residents to be a local institution and a landmark.

Selectmen held a hearing late last month aimed at revoking the license for abandonment, a stipulation in the town's regulations for liquor licenses that allows town officials to pull a license after a business has been closed for seven consecutive calendar days or more than 20 business days in the course of a year.

Rather than the quick ruling town officials had expected, Rubin requested a 45-day extension in an effort to transfer the license to developer Mark Dickinson, of Dickinson Development Corp., which developed the shopping plaza from a former landfill almost a decade ago.

"When we decided to wind down the operation, quite frankly, the liquor license was not paramount in my mind," Rubin, whose family has operated the business on the site since 1922, said at the hearing. "I didn't focus on it and I was busy with other matters." The hearing was continued to May 19.

The license cannot be sold to another owner and must be returned to the town if it is revoked or no longer in use. However, Rubin plans to incorporate the transfer as part of a consulting agreement reached with Dickinson, who said he has "a location that cries for a liquor store" in the site of the former Linens 'n Things, which closed last year when the housewares retailer shuttered 371 stores nationwide, including spots in Burlington and Chelmsford.

The proposed liquor store would likely be one of three tenants operating in the 22,000-square-foot space, which has been vacant since October, Dickinson said. "Things aren't very good right now," he said, "and we've had absolutely no interest in the shopping center from any other retailers, despite how good of a location it is."

Despite potentially filling the storefront, the proposal has drawn mixed reactions from town officials and local business leaders, including concerns that it could tie up the town's last package store license and move it away from downtown businesses that relied on the additional foot traffic.

Cambridge-based Oaktree Development announced plans late last year to purchase the 30,000-square-foot Atlantic property from Rubin and build a four-story residential development that would include space for a smaller food store on its first floor, as well as a bookstore and some outdoor and indoor meeting space.

Reading officials have maintained that the proposed development is consistent with longtime plans aimed at revitalizing the business district, where a $5.49 million state-funded project has been in the works since March 2008.

Some local officials, including Selectmen Richard Schubert, have shown interest in holding the license as an incentive to develop the grocery store at the site.

"If we have one liquor license to choose and help develop or influence the development of one of those spots," Schubert said at the hearing, "I'd probably be interested in keeping it at the Atlantic site."

That approach makes sense for business officials like Irene Collins, executive director of the Reading-North Reading Chamber of Commerce, which draws more of its membership from smaller stores downtown than at the shopping plaza.

"If they're thinking that holding a liquor license would be a draw for a good business to come down there for which the smaller businesses would benefit, then I would say it's a good idea," she said.

Still, Collins wasn't completely sold. "At the same point, Arnold Rubin has done so much for the town, and what else are they going to put in that shopping plaza?"

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed; pinning a dollar figure on the overall arrangement would be difficult to speculate, according to several local business owners and representatives.

"Its value is an intrinsic value, based upon the business that you're buying, or I guess in this situation, would be the potential of the location that the license is being transferred to," said Dan Busa, who has been in the wine and spirits business for nearly 50 years and opened Busa's Reading Liquors in 2005.

Given the size of the opening, Busa said, the proposal seemed far from a sure thing.

"It's a busy plaza, all that is evident, but somebody's got to take a risk to go in there and pay for the fit up," he said, estimating that it could cost about $250,000 to start a liquor store in that location. "It's a big space."