Steeple City Plaza in downtown North Adams sold for $2 million to a Connecticut-based realty company

NORTH ADAMS — Steeple City Plaza, home to a number of downtown businesses and the now shuttered North Adams Movieplex 8, is under new ownership.

First Hartford Realty Corp. sold the plaza to another Connecticut realty company for $2 million in late April, according to records filed with the Northern Berkshire Registry of Deeds. Efforts to reach the new owner, NRT Realty, and its attorney were not successful Monday.

The parcel includes Burger King, a strip mall building with Planet Fitness and a liquor store, and an L-shaped building on American Legion Drive and Main Street that’s home to businesses like Papa Gino’s, Label Shopper and T-Mobile. In between the buildings is a 500-space parking lot. In total, the shopping center is 131,000 square feet, according to First Hartford Realty’s website.

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At one time, the plaza was being considered as a location for the Extreme Model Railroad and Contemporary Architecture Museum, according to city leaders, but the museum declined earlier this year to comment. Efforts to reach EMRCA Monday were not successful.

John Toic, First Hartford Realty’s president, declined to comment early this year when asked if it had been talking to the museum about a potential sale.

NRT Realty does not own other property in the Berkshires, according to the registries of deeds. The company is based in Avon, Conn., and paperwork filed with the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth list its principal as N. Robert Trigg.

The downtown property is worth more than twice the recent sale price — the most recent assessment totaled $5.4 million, according to Jessica Lincourt, the city assessor.

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Some businesses in the plaza have struggled. Gordmans, a department store which occupied a large storefront at the plaza, opened in February 2020 only to close a few months later, partly due to some of the financial pressures brought on by the pandemic.

That space is now vacant. More recently, many residents mourned the loss of the North Adams Movieplex 8, the movie theater in the plaza, when it closed at the end of January. Before it closed, First Hartford Realty Corporation, owned the movie theater business.

This story may be updated.