Drive down Route 114 past the Loop and you pass two buildings that sat empty, in one form or another, for years. One is the old Harrison's Roast Beef building at 80 Chickering Road. The other is the former Bertucci's at 435 Andover Street. Neither building looked like it belonged in the same story. Nearby, at the Eaglewood Shops, Burtons Grill has been running its own steady weekend brunch and seasonal outdoor dining for years, proof the corridor can hold a full-service restaurant without much drama. But on March 23, 2026, North Andover's Select Board sat through licensing applications for the two empty properties in the same meeting, and what happened next tells you something real about how this town actually absorbs change.
The Agenda Item That Connected Two Empty Buildings
Harrison's had run at 80 Chickering Road for nearly 40 years, known across the Merrimack Valley for its roast beef sandwiches, before it closed in September 2023. The property sold that month for $1.21 million to a realty trust, and what followed was rough even by empty-storefront standards. The new owner reopened it as Patrick's NorthShore Eatery, which didn't take. He tried again with Harrison's old menu paired with Town Line Pizza & Seafood. That didn't take either.
By February 2026, Billy Griffin and Scott Brandolini, who run Brando's Cutlets in Haverhill, had leased the space and started calling it Brando's Part II. The Select Board, acting as the town's licensing commission, voted unanimously that March to issue them a common victualler's license.
The same night, the board also took up an application from Tavern Opco LLC for a liquor license at 435 Andover Street, the long-vacant Bertucci's building on the same stretch of road. Two restaurants, two buildings that had each struggled to hold a tenant, approved for licenses on the same agenda.
Then the clocks split.
Two Weeks on the License, Two Months in Practice
| Brando's Part II | Tavern in the Square | |
|---|---|---|
| Building | 80 Chickering Road, former Harrison's Roast Beef | 435 Andover Street, former Bertucci's |
| License approved | March 23, 2026 | March 23, 2026 |
| Opened | April 6, 2026 | Expected by end of September 2026 |
| Time from license to open | About two weeks | Roughly six months |
That two-week gap for Brando's is a little misleading on its own. Griffin and Brandolini had leased 80 Chickering Road back in early February, which means they'd already had close to two months to fit out the space before the town's license ever came through. The license landed almost as a formality, two weeks before opening night, after the real work was mostly done.
Brando's Part II opened its doors on April 6, keeping the same hours as the Haverhill original: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday, noon to 6 on Sunday. The menu is a straight copy of what's worked at 612 Broadway in Haverhill for decades, nine chicken sandwiches, eight pasta dinners, soups and salads, minus the roast beef that gave the old building its name. Griffin expected to employ 10 to 15 people. It is, by design, the same restaurant in a bigger room.
Tavern in the Square is a different kind of project. North Andover is one of five new Massachusetts locations the chain announced in August, alongside Seekonk, Dartmouth, Norwell and Quincy, and it's the first of the five expected to open, arriving in September while the rest roll out through 2027. The company is simultaneously in the middle of a full interior renovation of its original suburban location in Burlington, its first restaurant built outside the immediate Boston core. North Andover isn't getting a menu copied from next door. It's getting a full bar, an entertainment license, and a kitchen built from scratch inside a shell that had sat empty since Bertucci's left. When it does open, the chain has said guests can expect the same seasonal touches showing up at its other locations this time of year, fall beers and pumpkin cocktails included.
Why the Gap Isn't About Red Tape
It's tempting to read a two-week opening against a six-month one and assume somebody hit a permitting wall. That's not really what happened here. Brando's took over a space that had already been rebuilt twice by tenants before them, kitchen equipment and dining layout largely in place, and needed to bring in a menu they'd been running successfully in Haverhill for years. Tavern in the Square needed to build a full-service bar and entertainment concept into a building that had been sitting untouched, as part of a five-location rollout the company is managing at the same time it renovates an existing location down the highway in Burlington.
Scale is part of the story too. Tavern in the Square started more than 20 years ago in Cambridge's Central Square and now runs 16 locations across Massachusetts and 21 across New England, backed since last year by a private equity acquisition that folded its parent company into a platform generating roughly a billion dollars in annual revenue. A restaurant built at that scale comes with its own construction and licensing sequence, entertainment permits included, that a single sandwich shop expanding to a second location simply doesn't need.
The license approval was the easy part for both of them. What happened after the vote was the actual project, and the two projects were never the same size.
That hasn't stopped the corridor from becoming a talking point. Local Facebook groups have had real back and forth over what Route 114 is turning into. Some residents are glad to see two long-vacant buildings filled and jobs attached to both. Others have pointed to traffic that already backs up near the Loop during peak commuting and shopping hours, and worry that a restaurant built around bar crowds and sports nights will make weekend congestion worse. A few have simply asked whether the corridor needs another recognizable chain instead of an independent restaurant. Both reactions come from the same place: people notice when buildings that sat empty for years suddenly don't.
What This Means for Anyone Watching Route 114
By the time Tavern in the Square opens later this month, both of the corridor's most visible long-term vacancies will be filled for the first time in years. The Harrison's building went through two failed reboots before Brando's made it stick, and the $1.21 million sale that started that stretch back in 2023 barely covered what came after. The old Bertucci's space sat as one of those buildings locals drove past wondering what would finally take it. Route 114 is on track to end September with two working restaurants where there were two failed or empty ones back in March, and neither took the same amount of time to get there.
For residents who've followed the back and forth in local Facebook groups over whether the corridor is turning too corporate, that's really the useful takeaway. Whether you'd rather see a vacant building filled by a small operator expanding from the next town over or by a regional chain investing in a five-location rollout, both routes landed in the same place this year: fewer dark storefronts between the Loop and downtown. One took a working restaurant concept and gave it a second location. The other is building a full bar and kitchen from an empty shell as part of a five-restaurant push across the state. Both were worth watching. Only one of them was ever going to be fast.
Either way, the corridor looks different now than it did in March, and it will look different again once the second building's doors finally open. That's worth knowing whether you drive Route 114 every day or just pass through on your way somewhere else.
If you're thinking about what this kind of change means for a specific street or a specific house nearby, that's a conversation worth having with someone who watches these buildings turn over in real time. Evelyn Rockas has spent years tracking exactly this kind of shift across North Andover and the rest of the North Shore. Let's Connect if you want to talk through what's actually happening on your street.
