Eighty Chickering Road and 435 Andover Street sit about a mile and a half apart on the same stretch of Route 114 that cuts through North Andover. Both buildings spent years empty, or close to it. Both just landed new restaurants within six months of each other, in 2026. And if you only read the local chatter, you'd think both stories are about the same thing: another sign that this corridor is filling up.
They're not the same story. One building is finally working because a family business took a chance on a location with a real failure record behind it. The other is working because a growing regional chain picked the safest bet on the street. Once you see the difference, you start reading every empty storefront on Route 114 differently.
The Building That Couldn't Hold A Tenant
Harrison's Roast Beef ran at 80 Chickering Road for close to 40 years, a name that meant something across the Merrimack Valley for its roast beef sandwiches. When it 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. The menu and format didn't work. He tried again, bringing back the old Harrison's menu and adding Town Line Pizza & Seafood alongside it. That didn't work either. In under three years, one address burned through two different concepts, according to reporting from Haverhill news outlet WHAV.
Then, in February 2026, Billy Griffin and Scott Brandolini leased the building. The two run Brando's Cutlets in Haverhill, a shop with its own long history: Scott's grandfather, the late Richard Brandolini, opened the original in an old Burger Chef location on upper Main Street decades ago. They called the new spot Brando's Part II, and it opened April 6, 2026, serving the same menu as the Haverhill original: nine chicken cutlet sandwiches, eight pasta dinners, soups and salads. Roast beef, notably, is not on the menu.
"We are very exciting to be expanding to North Andover," Griffin told WHAV when the lease closed. The town's Licensing Commission approved the common victualler's license on a unanimous vote, and board member David Kres called it a welcome addition to the community.
What's worth sitting with is who actually solved this building's problem. It wasn't a national chain with a real estate team scouting high-traffic corners. It was two guys who already had a loyal following forty minutes up the road and were willing to bet that following would drive south for the same sandwich.
The Site That Never Had To Prove Itself
A mile and a half south, at 435 Andover Street, the former Bertucci's building is about to reopen as Tavern in the Square, part of a five-location Massachusetts expansion that also includes planned openings in Seekonk, Dartmouth, Norwell, and Quincy. North Andover is first in line, with an opening targeted for the second half of September 2026, according to coverage from Hoodline and What Now Boston.
This isn't a small operation testing a new market. Tavern in the Square started in Cambridge's Central Square back in 2006 and now runs 16 locations across Massachusetts. In March 2025, private equity firm Authentic Restaurant Brands acquired parent company Broadway Hospitality Group in a recapitalization deal that brought the platform's annual revenue to roughly $1 billion. CEO Stephen DeSousa has said individual locations generate about $7.5 million in annual sales.
That number is the whole point. A company modeling $7.5 million a year per restaurant does not take a chance on a building with a documented failure record. It goes where the traffic pattern is already proven, in a space that was occupied by a recognizable national chain until recently. North Andover's Select Board approved the location's all-alcoholic liquor license back in March, clearing the way for a September debut timed to arrive with fall menu additions like pumpkin cocktails and a seasonal harvest pizza.
Locals are already arguing about it in North Andover's Facebook groups, and the debate is genuinely split. Some residents see a filled parking lot where an empty one used to be, and a restaurant format built for family dinners, sports nights, and everything in between. Others worry about what a high-volume bar concept does to weekend traffic near the Route 114 corridor already known locally as The Loop, and whether another recognizable chain nudges the town further from the version of itself people moved here for.
Both sides are right about what they're describing. They're just describing two different kinds of growth happening at the same time, on the same road, for two different reasons.
What The Contrast Actually Tells You
Put the two side by side and a pattern shows up that neither Facebook thread quite captures. The hardest building on Route 114 to keep occupied got fixed by an independent operator who already had a proven product and a customer base willing to travel for it. The easiest building to fill, a former national chain location with a built-in customer memory, went to a much bigger chain with the balance sheet to move fast once the license cleared.
Neither pattern is going away. If you're paying attention to what opens next along this corridor, the properties still sitting empty are the ones to watch. The next tenant to succeed there probably won't be a chain either. It'll be someone who already has a following somewhere close by and is willing to bet on a harder address, the way Griffin and Brandolini did.
We saw a version of this same split play out earlier this year in downtown Woburn, when two new cocktail bars opened on Main Street the same season a decades-old Portuguese feast kept running its own calendar two blocks away, proof that a commercial strip can add an identity without losing the one it already had.
What This Means For Your Next Few Weeks
Practically, here's where things stand as of mid-September. Brando's Part II has been open since April and is running full hours, Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 6 p.m., at 80 Chickering Road. Tavern in the Square is expected to open at 435 Andover Street before the month is out, bringing its usual menu of scratch burgers, sandwiches, wood-fired pizzas, bowls, and pastas, along with the fall seasonal additions the chain has already been previewing at other locations.
If you've driven past either building in the last three years and wondered what was going to happen to it, both questions just got answered. One took a family with a second-generation name behind it. The other took a company with a billion dollars in annual platform revenue behind it. Route 114 has room for both, and now you know exactly why each one landed where it did.
For more on what's happening around North Andover, our North Andover neighborhood page has a running look at the town's local scene alongside the market data. And if you're thinking about your own next move in this town, whether that's buying, selling, or just figuring out what your home is worth in a corridor that's clearly still changing, Jodi Fitzgerald is happy to walk through it with you. Schedule a free consultation whenever you're ready.
