Star Market plans store for former Sears complex in the Fenway
The building likely wouldn’t be permitted and built until at least 2024.
Star Market plans to jump across Boylston Street and settle down at a new home in the Fenway. The supermarket company said Wednesday that it has reached a deal with developers Samuels & Associates and Alexandria Real Estate Equities for a new, 50,000-square-foot store in 401 Park, the massive former Sears complex that Samuels and Alexandria are redeveloping.
Star Market would move in to a new building to be built on that site and close its longtime store nearby at Boylston and Kilmarnock streets. The company has a deal in place to sell that 2-acre site to Samuels, the firm that has remade much of that corner of the Fenway into a canyon of apartment and office buildings in recent years.
Samuels has long eyed a new grocery store for 401 Park, previously known as Landmark Center, and nearly a decade ago announced a deal with Wegman’s, which eventually fell through. In January, Alexandria — a national life science real estate developer that has built much of Kendall Square — announced a $1.5 billion deal to buy the project from Samuels’ investors, and will partner with the longtime Fenway developers on its next phases. That includes a roughly 400,000-square-foot office building planned for a corner of the site that is today loading docks and a Bed, Bath & Beyond store, near the Green Line tracks that run past the building.
Samuels and Alexandria aim to file plans for that building this spring with the Boston Planning & Development Agency. If it’s approved, Star Market would go into the ground floor.
“For many years, we have aspired to incorporate a new, full-service grocery store for the Fenway neighborhood,” said Samuels principal Peter Sougarides. “We are delighted to partner with Star Market and create an opportunity for them to expand and evolve.”
Long seen as standalone stores — such as the low-slung Boylston store with its large parking lot — supermarkets have become an increasingly popular anchor of large mixed-use developments around Boston. Ink Block, in the South End, has a popular Whole Foods, while Star opened a large store in the Hub on Causeway project atop North Station about two years ago. Now the Fenway is getting one as well.
It won’t happen overnight.
The building likely wouldn’t be permitted and built until at least 2024. Star plans to keep its current store on Boylston Street open until then, and then move to the new location, which will be about 20,000 square feet larger and include home delivery and “drive up and go” service. Then Samuels will take over the two-acre site of the current store, likely for redevelopment as something larger.
“The Fenway community can look forward to a brand-new, technology-enabled, state-of-the-art store,” said Rob Backus, president of Shaw’s and Star Market. “We look forward to partnering with Samuels & Associates to make the project a reality.”
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