Rite Aids across the country shuttered their doors earlier this year due to bankruptcy, leaving several former pharmacies in the Concord area vacant. In Allenstown, the Rite Aid building at 46 Allenstown Road will see new life as a hardware store.
Aubuchon Hardware is moving from 77 Turnpike Street and rebranding as Aubuchon Ace Hardware. The store’s current building was purchased by Spiros Athanas of Gilford in 2023. Plans are underway to bring a McDonald’s to that location, meaning that Aubuchon, a tenant at will, needed to look for another spot.
Michael Frascinella, chair of the town’s economic development committee, said he’s happy the hardware store will stay in Allenstown.
“We’re always keenly interested in supporting our local businesses,” Frascinella said. “Aubuchon has been like a landmark for the town. It’s been there for decades, and we were reluctant to see it go.”
He worried that if Aubuchon left Allenstown, it would leave residents without options for where to shop.
“TD Bank closed in Pembroke, and now Rite Aid’s closed and we’ve got no pharmacy, so that forces residents to have to go either to Hooksett or north into Concord for those same services,” he said.
The spot left vacant by Aubuchon will be torn down and rebuilt into a McDonald’s, according to Frascinella. He said Aubuchon expects to open at its new location towards the end of January, leaving its current site vacant for the McDonald’s project to begin.
Across the street from the soon-to-be Aubuchon Ace Hardware is a small shopping plaza that houses Sully’s, Dunkin’, Small Town Styles Hair Salon and Mari-Vin’s Deli.
Owned by Massachusetts-based Allen Plaza LLC, the center is undergoing renovations to its buildings and its parking lot.
“They’ve done extensive patching of large sections of the parking lot,” Frascinella said. “They’re even repairing the granite curbing that separates the parking lot from the highway, and one of the recent things they did was to install a concrete pier and a new light tower in the middle of the parking lot.”
The building with Dunkin’, Mari-Vin’s and the hair salon underwent an exterior renovation, with the coffee and donut chain also redoing its interior.
“Hopefully, it’ll impress people with the fact that a local business is spending a lot of money renovating a major building to provide a more appealing location to shop for various goods and services,” Frascinella said.