Gardner Plaza

Gardner Plaza operates as a community-scale shopping plaza in Gardner, Massachusetts, at 60 Pearson Boulevard, serving a smaller central Massachusetts market roughly 35-40 minutes’ drive northwest of Worcester. The property carries Staples and Ocean State Job Lot as its two largest chain tenants, positioning it as a discount and convenience-goods destination rather than a fashion-anchored regional draw.

CVS Pharmacy and Aubuchon Hardware round out the property’s daily-needs tenant base, alongside a cluster of independently-run local businesses including a hair salon, a Chinese restaurant and a pizza shop, a tenant mix weighted heavily toward serving Gardner’s own resident population rather than pulling shoppers from the wider region. NAPA Auto Parts and Anthony’s Liquor Mart occupy adjacent units.

Gardner’s own economic history, a city whose furniture manufacturing base has substantially declined as production shifted to the American South and overseas, has shaped the character of its retail development more broadly, with newer projects in the same Route 2 corridor area, including a Ninety Nine Restaurant & Pub that opened in August 2019 with three-hour opening-month wait times, reflecting continued demand for convenience and casual-dining retail even as the city’s industrial employment base has shrunk.

That discount-and-convenience tenant profile, built around Staples, Ocean State Job Lot, CVS Pharmacy and Aubuchon Hardware rather than fashion or department-store anchors, reflects Gardner Plaza’s role serving a smaller, post-industrial New England city’s daily shopping needs rather than competing as a regional retail destination.