View story at wbjournal.com
By Katherine Hamilton
The property at 2 Mercantile St. in Worcester, which includes The Mercantile rooftop restaurant that opened in April, sold for $5.55 million on Wednesday.
Chip Norton, manager of Wellesley-based developer Franklin Realty Advisors, was the seller in the deal. Norton bought the property as part of his $24.5-million purchase of parcels in downtown Worcester in 2015.
It was bought by Mayfield Point LLC, an entity registered to Naveed Iqbal of Manchester, N.H. and Ehsan Mohammad of Brookline, according to the Worcester South District Registry of Deeds. Mayfield Point LLC previously owned 409 Park Ave. in Worcester, which is a 7/11 corner store, but sold that property in December for $1.8 million.
The 2 Mercantile St. property was put on the market that same month – December – for $5.7 million. Norton invested roughly $4.7 million in developing the restaurant space, so the final sale price marks just under $1 million in profit, according to the website of Kelleher & Sadowsky Associates, Inc., the Worcester company that listed the property.
The Mercantile restaurant seats 500 and is run by Boston-based Broadway Hospitality Group, who has a 15-year lease agreement at the 16,500-square-foot property.
The $5.6-million land deal only included the property and does not necessarily include the sale of either restaurant business.