If you want to talk to Lee Marden and his property manager Lori Orsini, don’t try doing it in the parking lot of the Concord Business Center. Just about everybody who drives in and out of the facility will interrupt you to chat with them.
Those conversations, although frustrating to would-be interviewers, are a reflection of the congenial atmosphere that Marden, who until last week owned the center, built up over four-and-a-half decades at an otherwise unremarkable commercial complex on south Hall Street.
Although it houses a mixed bag of some 40 businesses, both retail and light industrial, the center sometimes feels more like a neighborhood.
Actually, make that 40 business and one home, because Marden and his wife, Terry, live in what is officially a caretakers’ apartment on the second floor of one of the five buildings.
“I have a great commute,” Marden joked, although he noted some drawbacks: “The trash trucks come through at 4:30.”
Marden, 82, is selling the center because he wants to slow down now that he is almost two decades past retirement age, but he won’t disappear from the Concord business scene. He is still part-owner of a building in Eagle Square, and he won’t disappear from Hall Street, either.
Even after Massachusetts-based commercial property investors Northwood Capital takes over the complex, the couple will stay in the apartment, which exists only because Marden got the city to change its zoning lows to allow it.
Expect the parking-lot conversations to continue.
Chief of operations
Marden is a Massachusetts native who grew up on Boston’s South Shore and graduated from UNH in 1965. His father worked in commercial real estate, so he had experience with the industry when he and brothers moved to New Hampshire in the mid-1970s.
Having received a government and political science degree at Durham, where he got to know Republican stalwarts including Chuck Douglas, Marden got a job as chief of operations for then-Speaker of the House of Representatives George Roberts. His work included organizing the brand new Legislative Office Building.
Over the years he worked as chief of staff for several House speakers, on and off, while doing commercial real estate business, including the Concord Business Center.
The Center dates back to 1979, when Marden bought land on Hall Street that had been farmed many decades earlier. At the time, the land held a couple of dilapidated homes and the stretch of road south of I-93 — which everybody called “the turnpike” even though it’s not part of the state turnpike system — had few businesses.
Marden built one long 20,000-square-foot building divided into 5,000-square-foot units and started leasing them to businesses. Over the years, he built or expanded four more, changing the unit size to 3,000 square feet because that fit the market better.
Today, the 15-acre center houses everything from a brewery to three churches, with long-term tenants like Adams Lock & Key, which has been there almost from the start, and brand-new tenants that moved in this summer.
Marden said the center almost never has units stay open for more than a month or two. The location, near I-93 and I-89 with a quick shot up the road into downtown Concord, has always been a selling point.
He also credits the center’s success to Orsini, who has often overseen it for months at a time while Marsden was away on a long sailing trip. She is so valuable to the operation that part of the sales agreement involves her staying on, and Northwood Capital has hired her to manage a retail complex at 80 South Main St., which the firm bought recently.
The sale was announced to tenants at an outdoor barbecue on Sept. 9 that saw an outpouring of goodwill towards Marden. Charles Lundergan, owner of Steadfast Spirits and Litherman’s Limited, and a tenant for eight years, said he viewed Marden as a friend and a mentor, not just a landlord.
That atmosphere seems to have carried over to the recent purchase, Orsini said.
“The comments of the attorney that have been involved with this, to me, is: ‘ I have never had two groups of people come together and have it be so amendable — no bickering, I want this, I want that. This is the smoothest closing I’ve ever done,’ they said,” Orsini said.
Details about the purchase have not been released at Marden’s insistence.
“I want to protect people’s privacy,” he said.
Time to move on
A conservative Republican who is a big supporter of President Donald Trump, Marden has at least one unusual opinion: He likes Concord’s zoning rules on businesses because they are so detailed. “That is 180 degrees different from everybody else’s idea,” he admits.
The key, he said, is that their detail and specificity makes clear what is possible and what isn’t. And sometimes things simply aren’t possible; the zoning forced him to shrink one expansion, for instance.
“I would much prefer to work in a place with really definitive zoning, rather one that’s kind of open… I’ve dealt with towns in New Hampshire and Massachusetts where they have a zoning bylaw but there’s not not a lot of detail to it. It becomes like looking into a crystal ball or dealing with a bowl of Jello — you satisfy something over here and something over there pops up,” he said. “If it’s clear and it’s detailed, you’re good.”
Marden said he has received many queries about selling the center over the years, almost always from out-of-state investors. He says he decided to sell to Northwood Capital, a two-man investment firm, because they hit it off and struck him as people who would allow the center to continue as it has.
“With the passage of 45 years, I’m not as energized or as sharp as I was, and you and this park deserve the best,” he told tenants at the announcement barbecue. “It is time to pass the reins to someone else, and in my new judgement, I could not be more comfortable with the new family partnership that will be the new owners.”