Maybe they should start calling it Kerrigan Corners.
Ed Kerrigan, owner of Jake’s Quechee Market and Squechee Clean, has purchased the former Singleton’s Market property that abuts his laundromat and car wash and is across the road from his market near the intersection of Route 4 and Waterman Hill Road in Quechee.
Singleton’s Market, owned by the Singleton family, who operate a market in Proctorsville, Vt., closed their Quechee store in 2019, citing an unsustainable fall-off in business during the winter months.
Kerrigan, who opened Jake’s Quechee Market in 2013 and opened the laundromat and car wash across the road in 2018, said he doesn’t have any immediate plans for the nearly 7,000-square-foot building other than finding “a quality tenant or two.”
The property, which was listed for $750,000, sold for $650,000, according to the New England Real Estate Network’s multiple listing service. Cam Brown with Lang McLaughry Commercial Real Estate was the listing broker and is also tasked with finding a business to occupy the property.
Kerrigan said that the purchase of the Singleton’s property made sense inasmuch as Squechee Clean abuts the lot and “the price got more attractive over time” over the 18 months it was on the market.
Kerrigan sold his Jake’s Market & Deli convenience store empire that he founded with a single store to his No. 2, Bruce Bergeron, in 2018. But he held onto Jake’s Quechee Market, which is managed by his son, James Kerrigan, a Middlebury grad who also opened Jake’s ONE Market in Burlington’s Old North End last year.
Both of the Kerrigan-owned Vermont Jake’s markets upscale the general store concept by offering a quality deli menu, premium packaged foods, extensive craft beer and beverage selection, breads from artisanal Vermont bakeries, and fresh vegetables and fruits, many of them from local farmers when in season.
At Jake’s Quechee Market, the Kerrigans have also partnered with Vermont’s Skinny Pancake, which has continued to be open seven days a week during the pandemic.
“We got off to a slow start, but we’re actually doing really well there now,” Kerrigan said of the Quechee location. “With the pandemic, people have been wanting to shop closer to home.”
Although retail stores were already suffering before the pandemic, Kerrigan said the high-traffic corridor in Quechee remains a good location for business.
“There are 10,000-plus or -minus cars a day driving through,” Kerrigan said. “There are not a lot of those roads where we are.”
â The sudden closing of Cantore’s Crossroads Cafe on Sykes Mountain Avenue in White River Junction a couple weeks ago was only temporary while cafe owner Vinnie Cantore wrapped up buying the property from previous owner Randy Jacobs, Cantore told me. Cantore, who acquired the business itself from Jacobs in 2017, said he will reopen Crossroads but to serve only breakfast from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. “until things pick up again.” As with many other restaurants, Cantore has been hard-pressed to keep the cafe staffed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
â Charlestown’s Georgiadis family, which owns the Charlestown House of Pizza and has interests in real estate and olive oil importing, has acquired a marquee property in Claremont: 2 Pleasant St., which faces Opera House Square and is the location of Taverne on the Square restaurant and bar.
Assessed at $488,000 in 2019, the sales price was $525,000, according to the Claremont assessor’s office.
Konstantinos Georgiadis said the two-floor building, built in 1925 with 11,000 square feet of usable space, matched the family’s criteria for rate of return and future growth potential, especially in light of the city’s $4.5 million revitalization plan now underway for Pleasant Street.
“That was a huge point of interest for us,” Georgiadis said.
In addition to Taverne on the Square, 2 Pleasant St.’s other major ground-floor tenant is the Claremont Community Information office.
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
