DLC Management Corp. has acquired West Street Shopping Center, a 206,319-square-foot open-air property in Keene, New Hampshire, in a joint venture with Cohen & Steers — and the grocery anchor story at the center of the deal is what foodservice and F&B retail operators should track.
The property is anchored by a Hannaford supermarket that ranks as the No. 2-performing location in the entire Hannaford chain and has operated at the site since 1984. For food and beverage brands, emerging grocery concepts, and foodservice operators scouting second-generation space in New England, this transaction is a signal of where institutional capital is placing long-term bets.
The Asset and the Opportunity
DLC Management Corp. sourced the deal off-market, drawing on more than 20 years of owning and operating shopping centers in Keene — a regional commercial hub for southwestern New Hampshire. The firm manages more than $4 billion and 24 million square feet across 90-plus properties. Current occupancy at West Street sits at 80%, leaving roughly 40,000 square feet of second-generation retail space available. That vacancy is not a liability in DLC's framing — it is the value-creation thesis. Chris Ressa, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of DLC Management Corp., noted that a dominant grocery anchor driving traffic makes the leasing upside tangible: "We know the retailers, we know the customers, and we know where the demand is."
Existing national tenants alongside Hannaford include Hobby Lobby, Maurices, UPS, AAA, and Tropical Smoothie — a mix that reflects the convenience-and-destination blend that has kept grocery-anchored open-air centers outperforming enclosed malls through successive retail cycles.
What This Signals for F&B Operators
For foodservice and food retail operators, grocery-anchored open-air centers in college towns and regional hubs represent one of the more stable co-tenancy environments available. Keene State College, Antioch University, and Cheshire Medical Center provide the institutional demand base that reduces the traffic volatility operators face in pure tourist or seasonal markets. The state's tax-free shopping environment adds an additional pull from across the Vermont and Massachusetts borders.
The deal also reflects a broader procurement and site-selection reality: off-market transactions in proven retail corridors are increasingly how well-capitalized landlords are building portfolios, which means available space in those centers surfaces through relationship channels before it hits standard listing platforms. F&B operators and their real estate brokers tracking grocery-anchored vacancy in the Northeast should be paying close attention to DLC's leasing pipeline, given the firm's stated strategy of targeting college towns and regional retail hubs where it has established operator knowledge.
For brands and foodservice concepts evaluating retail co-tenancy and distribution strategy, a high-volume Hannaford as a neighbor is a meaningful foot-traffic credential — one that justifies underwriting a second-generation inline space even in a mid-sized market like Keene.
Operators and suppliers tracking grocery-anchored real estate as a channel for sampling, pop-up, or permanent placement should note that DLC's active asset management posture — filling 40,000 square feet with curated tenants — creates an opening for F&B concepts that can demonstrate traffic contribution to a landlord running a net-operating-income growth mandate. For more on how operators are evaluating physical retail as a growth channel, see our coverage of emerging brand launch frameworks.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
