Family Dollar Opening Kicks Off Retail Drive

HAVERHILL, MA-Flanked by tax-free New Hampshire, this city of 62,000 people has long struggled to attract retail, but community officials say a new shopping plaza proves that steps to strengthen such enterprises are bearing fruit. “Haverhill is becoming known as a good place to invest in,” Mayor James Fiorentini tells GlobeSt.com, using the Lafayette Square Family Dollar opening by developer Showcase Enterprises as a leading indicator of that notion.

According to the city’s CEO, new housing, upgraded infrastructure and critical zoning changes have improved the ability for stores to thrive in and around the downtown district. Thanks to a measure just passed by the Haverhill City Council, hundreds of residential units could be generated from the multiple mills that bear decaying witness to the Merrimack Valley’s former life as a river manufacturing town.

“If you bring in people, people bring in businesses,” says Fiorentini, whose three-year tenure has already seen one mill altered into housing and Forest City Development of Cleveland now eyeing a similar project.