Page 13 - BusinessWest December 9, 2024

Longmeadow
Jack deVilliers says the Longmeadow Shops checks all the boxes for him, from location and tenant mix
to access, visibility, and parking.
>>Continued from page 11
for the town, which has very few devel- opable parcels — meaning few opportu- nities for business growth.
For this latest installment of its Community Profile series, Business- West takes an in-depth look at Long- meadow and the many developing sto- ries there.
Food for Thought
As he talked with BusinessWest at a table in Lola’s, Santaniello said there is a considerable amount of dining history at that site.
Indeed, for several decades, this was a flagship location for Friendly’s, the chain started by Longmeadow Shops developer S. Prestley Blake and his brother Curtis.
Later, it was Umi’s, which essen- tially “papered over and bricked over” the Friendly’s as it installed its own look.
“As we dug through, we saw differ- ent iterations of Friendly’s, including a fireplace,” said Santaniello, adding that his family essentially took the storefront down to the studs in creat- ing Lola’s, which opened in March and is off to a solid start.
“This certainly provides
an opportunity for development, job creation, and new growth, which is not something we see very often, especially to the extent we can see from this parcel.”
“We had a great launch, and we’ve settled in,” he noted. “Everyone rush- es in to try a place at first — every night is like Saturday night when you first open up. That tapers off eventual- ly, and then you build it back up, and that’s where we are now.”
This success has not come at the expense of Posto, or probably any
of the other restaurants in town, he said, adding that the emergence of a “restaurant community,” as he put it, helps bring more people from across the region to the town.
Meanwhile, for the family, which is selling the third restaurant it owns, the Federal in Agawam, Lola gives them two operations about 250 yards apart, which brings several advan- tages, as well as lots of steps for San- taniello, who will go back and forth between the two spots at least a few times each day.
He passes an eclectic mix of shops and eateries, one that is historically
stable, a retail property where vacan- cies — and pending vacancies — are filled quickly.
Such is the case with one store- front, soon to be available as its own- ers retire, that will be filled by Warby Parker, the manufacturer and retailer of eyeglasses, contact lenses, and other products.
“When you look at the lifestyle cen- ters that Warby Parker has been going into ... they saw this, loved the commu- nity-center aspect of this, and jumped
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