North Andover's Two Hardest-Luck Addresses Just Got New Tenants

How many restaurants have to fail in the same building before people stop expecting the space to hold anything at all?

Drive down Chickering Road or along Route 114 past the old Bertucci's, and you have probably asked some version of that question without meaning to. Two of North Andover's most visible commercial addresses spent years testing that patience, one through a string of concepts that never stuck, the other through a vacancy that just sat there. Both are occupied again in 2026, and the way each one got filled says something worth knowing if you live here: this town solves its stubborn vacancies in more than one way, and the two fixes now sitting a few miles apart look nothing alike.

The Roast Beef Building That Wouldn't Hold a Concept

For nearly 40 years, 80 Chickering Road meant one thing: Harrison's Roast Beef, a name known across the Merrimack Valley for generous sandwiches. When Harrison's closed in September 2023, the property sold for $1.21 million to the Jacob/Patrick Realty Trust, with Konstantinos "Dean" Chongris of Boxford named as trustee. What happened next is the part locals actually remember. Chongris reopened the space as Patrick's NorthShore Eatery, a new menu and format that didn't take. He then brought back Harrison's original menu and added Town Line Pizza & Seafood alongside it. That combination struggled too.

Three attempts, one address, none of them lasting. That is the pattern that made this particular building feel cursed by early 2026.

The fix that finally worked came from outside town. Billy Griffin and Scott Brandolini, who run Brando's Cutlets in Haverhill, leased the Chickering Road property in early 2026 and announced plans for Brando's Part II. The North Andover Select Board approved their common victualler license at a March 23 meeting, and the restaurant opened Monday, April 6, running the same menu as the Haverhill original: nine chicken sandwiches, eight pasta dinners, soups, and salads. Roast beef is not on it, a detail that would have seemed unthinkable at this address a decade ago.

What made Brando's different from the concepts before it wasn't a bigger budget. Griffin and Brandolini were bringing over a formula that already worked a few miles away, the same recipes and same pricing that built Brando's Cutlets into a Haverhill institution since Brandolini's late grandfather Richard first opened it in an old Burger Chef location. They weren't guessing at what North Andover wanted. They were repeating something proven and betting the address, not the concept, was the problem.

The Bertucci's Building's Different Kind of Vacancy

The former Bertucci's at 435 Andover Street never went through a parade of failed operators. It just sat empty, long enough that locals started describing it as one of those buildings you drive past every day wondering what's next for it. That is a different kind of vacancy than Chickering Road's revolving door, and it drew a different kind of fix.

Tavern Opco LLC applied for a liquor license at the address, and the Select Board's public hearing and vote were scheduled for late March, alongside common victualler and entertainment license requests for the same business. That approval cleared the way for a September 2026 opening target, which the chain's parent company confirmed publicly as part of a five-location Massachusetts expansion announced in August, with North Andover slated to open first, ahead of planned locations in Seekonk, Dartmouth, Norwell, and Quincy that roll out through 2027.

Tavern in the Square isn't a local start-up chasing an open storefront. The chain got its start in Cambridge's Central Square roughly 20 years ago and now runs 16 Massachusetts locations. Its parent, Broadway Hospitality Group, was acquired in a 2025 recapitalization by private equity-backed Authentic Restaurant Brands, a deal that brought the platform to roughly $1 billion in annual revenue. Individual Tavern in the Square locations generate close to $7.5 million in annual sales on average, according to figures the CEO disclosed at the time of that acquisition. That is the scale of operation moving into the old Bertucci's space, not a single owner-operator testing a concept, but a well-capitalized chain executing a suburban rollout it has already mapped out through 2027, per reporting on the company's expansion plans.

Two Fixes, Side by Side

Put the two addresses next to each other and the contrast is hard to miss.

Neither building needed the same kind of rescue. Chickering Road needed an operator who already knew the formula worked somewhere close by. Route 114 needed a company with the capital and confidence to bet on a suburban corridor it had already scouted for expansion.

What the Corridor Debate Reveals

The Tavern in the Square opening didn't land quietly. Local Facebook groups and community pages picked up the announcement fast, and the reaction split roughly the way these things tend to in growing suburban corridors. Residents who see the old Bertucci's as a longstanding eyesore are glad to see the parking lot filled again, and they argue North Andover has been short on modern casual spots that work equally well for a family dinner, a sports night, or drinks after work. Others see it as one more sign that Route 114 is trending corporate, pointing to existing congestion near the retail corridor known locally as The Loop and wondering whether a high-volume bar and restaurant concept adds to weekend and evening traffic that already backs up during peak hours.

Both reactions are really about the same underlying question: what kind of growth does a town like North Andover want along its busiest commercial stretch. Luxury apartment developments, expanded retail, and mixed-use projects have already reshaped parts of town over the past decade, and a chain restaurant taking over a long-vacant anchor building reads, to some residents, as more of the same trajectory. To others, it reads as simply putting a dead building back to work.

Neither view is wrong. What's worth noticing is that this same debate never attached itself to Brando's Part II. An independent operator moving into a struggling address didn't spark the same conversation about corporate creep, even though it filled a comparably visible spot on a comparably busy road. The reaction says as much about the type of tenant as it does about the vacancy itself.

Where the Rest of the Map Stands

These two openings land in a food scene that already has some steady anchors. Tavern On High, tucked into the historic West Mill building on High Street, has built a following with a 30-plus person bar and a patio where dogs are welcome alongside their owners, the kind of independently run spot that doesn't generate the same corporate-versus-local debate because it never brought a chain's name with it. Over at Eaglewood Shops, Burtons Grill & Bar has been a fixture for brunch and seasonal outdoor dining, and CAVA's fast-casual Mediterranean location joined that same retail center a couple of years back, adding another option to a stretch of Turnpike Street that has quietly become one of the town's more reliable dining clusters.

What changes with Brando's Part II and Tavern in the Square isn't the overall count of places to eat. It's the signal each one sends about how a stubborn commercial vacancy actually gets solved here. Sometimes it takes someone from a few towns over who already knows the menu works. Sometimes it takes a company with the balance sheet to bet on a corridor years before the space finally turns over. Both paths just proved out in the same year, on two addresses residents had mostly given up expecting anything from.

If you've been driving past either building wondering what would finally stick, the answer turned out to be two different kinds of confidence arriving at the same time.

For more on what's shaping daily life and property values across North Andover and the surrounding Merrimack Valley towns, the team at O'Connell & Company Real Estate keeps a close eye on the ground-level changes that matter to the people who actually live here. Reach out anytime you want a local read on what's happening in your corner of town.