According to a representative of the mall, construction on the Filene's will begin in March 2002--as soon as all the permitting is in place--and will involve razing the 86,000-sf Bradlees store and developing a parking lot on that site. Filene's will be located on the site of another parking lot and will be one of the mall's three anchor stores, along with Sears and J.C. Penney. Toys R Us, which was attached to Bradlees, will now become a freestanding store, the mall representative tells GlobeSt.com and will not be attached to the 140,000-sf, two story Filene's.

Bradlees, the former discount chain store, went bankrupt earlier this year. Stop & Shop acquired the rights to the chain's 111 leases and auctioned them off. In addition to Filene's, Home Depot, Kohl's, Target and Wal Mart were among the other stores that acquired some of the leases.

The 610,361-sf Searstown Mall is owned by Kimco Realty, which owns three other shopping centers in the state--Barrington Plaza in Great Barrington, Foxborough Plaza in Foxborough and Shrewsbury S/C in Shrewsbury. Among the other recent additions to Searstown are Circuit City and Old Navy.