It is fair to say — borrowing a phrase from a certain insurance company — that Bruce Waters knows a thing or two because he’s seen a thing or two.
A commercial real estate broker who has been finding and filling commercial space in the Upper Valley on behalf of clients for more than three decades, there is barely a building or company in Lebanon, Hanover and Hartford that at one time or another Waters hasn’t been involved with.
The Powerhouse Mall and Powerhouse Plaza? Waters found a buyer — for $12 million. Teeing up land for the Centerra office park in Lebanon? He was on it. Helping to pave developer Mike Davidson’s entry into revitalizing downtown White River Junction? He had a hand. Finding big box store tenants for the Route 12A commercial strip in West Lebanon? Credit (or blame) Waters.
Now, after 35 years since arriving in Hanover from Florida, Waters is stepping back from heading Lang McLaughry Commercial, the West Lebanon commercial real estate brokerage firm that was originally founded by the late Upper Valley real estate legend Bob McLaughry and later continued by his son, Bruce McLaughry, who has left the day-to-day business to Waters.
Now Waters and McLaughry have found someone to pick up the reins — and they didn’t have to search far. Cam Brown, a veteran of the Upper Valley real estate scene and agent in the Hanover office of Four Seasons Sotheby’s International — into which McLaughry and his partner Staige Davis merged the residential properties division of Lang McLaughry in 2015 — is succeeding Waters as head of commercial property brokerage firm.
“They are big shoes to fill,” Brown told me last week. “But I’m happy to be here and maybe bring new energy and ideas.”
Brown has an extensive background in commercial real estate development and project management, beginning with the Boston firm Leggat McCall Properties before moving to the Upper Valley to oversee the conversion and property management of the Rivermill Commercial Center in Lebanon and later joining builder Trumbull-Nelson as a project manager.
He also helped develop the private Montcalm Golf Club in Enfield for retired corporate executive Andy Sigler. Since 2008, Brown has been working alongside McLaughry on residential and land sales.
But look at all those vacant storefronts in the West Lebanon shopping plazas — isn’t commercial real estate market in the Upper Valley hurting from the tectonic shift in retailing to online?
Hardly, averred McLaughry, who replied that retail space is only the piece the public sees and estimates there is currently about 1.5 million-square feet in permitted space, much of it in Lebanon, that is expected to be built and come “online” in coming years: David Clem’s River Park project and Twin State Sand & Gravel’s Iron Horse Park, both in West Lebanon, along with projects along Route 120 in Lebanon (various issues have raised questions about the River Park and Iron Horse Park projects, leading some to wonder when and even if ground will be broken).
“We’re not going to get it all,” McLaughry said about Lang McLaughry Commercial being tasked with securing tenants for the space. He predicts, however, that with Dartmouth’s Thayer engineering school, Tuck business school and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center together spinning off and attracting various enterprises, office, studio and lab space will be required to meet a rising demand.
“There’s a lot of big money flowing into the Upper Valley,” McLaughry said.
Six months ago Shane Geno left his 30-year career as a truck driver to start a new line of work: He opened the Bridgewater Diner on Route 4 in Bridgewater and started serving up the kind of hearty roadside fare appreciated by locals, travelers and hungry work crews alike.
“Just a little bit of home cooking,” is how Geno puts it.
On May 24, Geno moved his diner about 2 miles east on Route 4, where he has taken over the former Eat Woodstock diner, adjacent to the motel Sleep Woodstock.
“It’s a really nice building, better parking lot; my old place was kind of hard to see” from the road, said Geno, who has expanded to new hours from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days a week and whose cooking talents include “a really huge omelet with chili in it,” “a half-pound hamburger,” smoked ribs and pork belly.
Geno said he wants to bring back the “glory days” of Cole Farm Restaurant, which occupied the same location for many years and was famed in the Kedron Valley as the go-to place for friends and families to meet and eat.
“I remember standing in line on a Friday night to get in,” Geno told me. “It was all locals back then.”
Since Cole Farm closed, the diner has gone through different incarnations, most recently as Eat Woodstock, which was operated by Brandon and Darcy Sharkey. The building is owned by Leslie Browne and Patrick Fultz, who own the adjacent Sleep Woodstock 12-room motel.
Although Geno did not have any restaurant experience prior to opening Bridgewater Diner, he said he got hooked on cooking when he “got really interested in cleaning up old cast iron skillets and dutch ovens” that he’d pick up a yard sales. One thing led to another.
“Once you clean them up, you got to use them,” Geno said. “Cast iron is what got me into cooking.”
John Lippman can be reached at jlippman@vnews.com.
