Community Corner
Big Y’s Bad Waterford Bet
The supermarket chain, despite moving out of Waterford in 2008, will continue to pay the lease at 128 Boston Post Road until 2022.
Sometimes business deals don’t work out as well as companies would have hoped.
On Dec. 19, 2001, Big Y Supermarkets bought out the lease from Shaw’s Supermarket at 128 Boston Post Road, according to town records. The lease, which was originally 25 years, was set to expire in the year 2022, according to town records.
Big Y most likely hoped to be there that entire time. Yet not even seven years after taking that lease over, Big Y moved its store out of the location in February of 2008, according to the Waterford's assessors office.
The problem was the supermarket chain was still on the hook for the remaining 14 years on the lease. For more than a year, they tried to sublease the spot out to another store.
On May 5, 2009, Ocean State Job Lot moved in, but only took over half of the location, according to town records. The other half has remained vacant.
Ocean State Job Lot has signed an agreement to be in the location until at 2022 as well, according to town records. The actual owner of the spot, i.e. the entity Big Y is leasing from, is SH Waterford Portfolio, and the property has an assessed value of $2.6 million, according to visionappraisal.com.
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