An unhappy marriage in Hanover is coming to an end: The Skinny Pancake will vacate its restaurant space on Lebanon Street — probably the sooner the better in its view — and is looking for a new location.
The Vermont restaurant company has given notice to Hanover Park building owner Jim Rubens that it will not renew its lease at the end of five years on Dec. 31.
But Rubens said he and the restaurant have “mutually agreed” that they can exit before then without being on the hook for the rest of the lease.
That doesn’t mean the crepe shop is skipping out of town, however.
Benjy Adler, who owns the eight-location Skinny Pancake chain with his brother Jonny Adler, said they expect “90% (to be) going toward a better situation” with a new location in Hanover, one that the brothers think will be at least on par with Lebanon Street. (I’m guessing they have their eye on the vacant Canoe Club space, but we’ll see.)
Adler sounded like a soon-to-be ex who’s already mailing out Happy Divorce announcements.
The relationship between the Adlers and Rubens went south not long after Skinny Pancake opened in 2016, when the brothers attempted to exercise an option in their lease agreement to buy the Hanover Park building for $5.6 million.
When Rubens and his wife and building co-owner, Susan Rubens, declined the offer, the Adlers sued, alleging breach of contract.
The stack of 90-plus filings grew more than 2 feet high in the nearly three-year legal battle in Grafton Superior Court, and when the Adlers lost at the trial level they appealed to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, which in a 4-0 decision affirmed the lower court’s decision that Skinny Pancake’s offer did not represent an “unequivocal, unconditional” offer to the seller.
Not exactly litigious types — the Vermont court system’s online database shows Skinny Pancake having never been a party to a lawsuit — the whole ordeal left the Adlers feeling burned, so it’s no surprise that they decided they’d had enough.
Given the number of vacant storefronts in Hanover, it would appear that a paying tenant like the Adlers packing up and leaving is no favor to Rubens. But he thinks he won’t have any problem filling the vacancy.
“We expect strong demand for the space as a restaurant, given the very strong interest we had in the space now occupied by Han Fusion Restaurant and given the premium quality of the Skinny Pancake space,” he said. (Han Fusion replaced the former Orient restaurant in the lower level of Hanover Park, which also didn’t have a happy experience as a tenant in the building.)
Rubens, for his part, called the court battle with Skinny Pancake “intense,” but said he didn’t detect ill feelings from the Adlers afterward and said dealings were “businesslike.”
Benjy Adler, while not revealing where Skinny Pancake may resurface, is only upbeat about what might come next.
“We’re most of the way through working out a deal and plan to stay in Hanover,” he said. “This is a good thing for us. We’re excited.”
An Upper Valley eye doctor is getting ready to move into the long-vacant former Citizens Bank building located on the corner of Maple Street and Pine Street in White River Junction, one of the most highly trafficked locations in the village.
Dean Barcelow, an optometrist with offices in White River Junction and Bethel, bought the two-story, 10,400-square-foot building for $375,000 last September, according to Hartford property records.
The building — which includes a spacious 3,000-square-foot basement where checks used to be cleared — was previously owned by CRE JV Mixed Five VT Branch Holdings LLC, a subsidiary of the giant Phoenix-based real estate investor Vereit Inc.
Last week work crews were fitting out the interior of the building, where Barcelow plans to relocate his practice and staff of eight from their current office in leased space on North Main Street which he hopes to be ready by March or April, Barcelow said.
Citizens Bank closed its White River Junction branch in 2017, citing declining customer traffic. The building has been vacant ever since.
But it looks like for $375,000 price Barcelow grabbed a bargain: The building is assessed at nearly $458,000, and Vereit acquired the building in 2006 — near the peak of the crazed real estate market before the 2007-09 recession — for $1.4 million, according to town property records (although that price may have included other bank branches Vereit had acquired at the time from Citizens Bank).
Well, that didn’t take long: Dave McMullen, the former Hanover town assessor who left last month following an uproar over the revaluation of property assessments he led in 2018, has resurfaced as the new town assessor in Conway, N.H.
McMullen’s departure after less than three years on the job was described as a “retirement” because he was “burned out,” Hanover Town Manager Julia Griffin said at the time.
But McMullen, a Nashua native who lives in Alexandria, N.H., told the Conway Daily Sun that he took the assessor’s job in Conway because he “wanted a change of venue” and “it seemed like a good opportunity.”
Asked for comment, McMullen, via email, said he had “no desire to speak on the matter other than to note that the comment about my retiring was not mine.”
“My letter of resignation simply stated I was terminating my employment relationship with Hanover” effective Dec. 27, he said.
Before coming to Hanover, McMullen, 59, held assessor positions in Lebanon and Claremont, among other New Hampshire communities.
I never understood why chocolate maker Lindt had its own store in West Lebanon when its chocolates were available in the candy aisle of any supermarket, but the Stratham, N.H.-based arm of the giant Swiss confectionary company is closing its Lindt Chocolate Shop outlet at Powerhouse Mall on Jan. 29.
The store is having a 50%-off sale on chocolates but you’d better hurry — when I visited last week, all the shelves were empty and the remaining stock was displayed on a couple of tables.
Powerhouse Mall manager Sarah Luhmann said the closing coincides with the expiration of the store’s lease at the end of the month. Luhmann doesn’t have a new tenant to announce yet, but the 1,320-square-foot store, self-contained as a stand-alone building in the mall’s parking lot, is primo retail space.
A spokesperson for Lindt said the West Lebanon location is one of four stores the company is closing and affected employees have been offered jobs at other locations or, if not possible, “have been given generous severance packages.”
Don’t be fooled by the name on the building, especially when it comes to commercial real estate: The Harvey Industries warehouse property on North Hartland Road outside of downtown White River Junction is now owned by a $197-million real estate investment fund controlled by New York “alternative investment firm” Angelo Gordon & Co.
The firm acquired the property for $1.5 million in October, according to Hartford town records, as part of the fund’s acquisition of the properties of Dunes Point Capital, which owns Harvey.
It’s a private equity world. The rest of us just work in it.
Got business news? Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
