Gastropub Proposal For Vacant Brockton Warehouse Falls Through

BROCKTON—A proposal to bring a rooftop "gastropub" to the abandoned Corcoran Supply Building at 308 Montello Street in Brockton has fallen through, pausing the city's efforts to attract more upscale restaurants and bars in an area with few high-end dining options.

According to the Brockton Planning Board and Conservation Commission's website, the plan was to transform the three-story, brick, art deco warehouse into a mixed-use apartment building with penthouses in a fourth-floor addition, a grocery store, and office space.

Don Taylor, owner of the Northeast Capital Group, planned to develop the building, and Colin Geoffrey, whose hospitality group manages G Pub in Providence, was the prospective tenant for the restaurant wing of the building.

Yet city documents reveal that the plan fell through due to required environment cleanup costs, with the total estimated at $250,000 by Ransom Consulting, LLC to remove gasoline tanks and a "buried object of unknown size, adjacent to the interior loading dock area."

"...the City has made several attempts to attract a private owner to revitalize the property, but to no avail," the website says. "One of the many stumbling blocks to redevelopment has been the presence of abandoned fuel storage tanks and the unknown financial risk due to potential soil contamination."

According to the city's website, the Montello Street warehouse was constructed around 1915 for the Everett C. Hall Grocery Supply Company and has been vacant for decades, sans some school department furniture and city records. The Corcoran Supply Company occupied the building from 1930 until 1980 and the city gained ownership of the property in 1996 as a result of a bankruptcy settlement.

At an October 14 virtual public meeting, the city began to prepare an application to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for federal funds to remove the environmentally hazardous waste.