On a recent afternoon at the West Concord end of Commonwealth Avenue, customers kept coming and going at Nashoba Brook Bakery while a crew finished putting up construction fencing next door. The fence surrounds 166 Commonwealth Avenue, near Laws Brook Road. For 57 years that address was E & S Mobile Service, and if your commute or Saturday errands run through the village, you have probably passed it thousands of times.
The corner will become a renovated full-service gas station with a country store. It is the second redevelopment plan for the site in three years and the smaller of the two. Town boards approved it over the summer. At its entrance, West Concord chose a modest building selling candy, crafts and hardware, the kind of store the village has been without since 2020.
Fifty-seven years at one address
E & S lasted long enough that the business and the building tell slightly different stories. The Concord Bridge's September 2025 farewell reconstructed the timeline:
- 1955: Howie Soberg and his business partner Ted Edwardsen open the business at Main Street and Baker Avenue.
- 1968: E & S moves to 166 Commonwealth Avenue.
- August 2025: Brothers Joe and Bill Soberg sell. "It was time to retire," Joe told the paper.
So the 70 years you may have seen quoted cover the whole family business, and the 57 years cover this corner. Mendon businessman Kevin Meehan bought the property that same August. His wider portfolio includes several car dealerships and Imperial-branded stores and gas stations.
The plan the village said no to first
The country store makes more sense once you know what was proposed before it. In 2023, Concord-based Arris Partners LLC pitched a three-story building for the half-acre lot. Residents raised parking and traffic concerns, and the developers withdrew.
| 2023 proposal | 2026 approved project | |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Arris Partners LLC | Kevin Meehan, through Concord Country Store, LLC |
| Building | Three stories | One story, about 2,162 square feet in the February plan |
| Uses | Restaurant, commercial space, 10 housing units | Full-service gas station and country store |
| Outcome | Withdrawn after pushback | Approved by town boards over the summer |
Anna Feldweg, who chairs the West Concord Advisory Committee, summed up the earlier plan this way: "It just seemed like there was way too much packed onto that property." Meehan's team thought about housing too. Project attorney Jonathan Silverstein told the committee the lot was "a great site for a couple of residential units," then added, "But it's tight." The team chose to keep "the base elements" of a gas station and a store.
The renovation will rework the existing building instead of replacing it with something larger. According to The Concord Bridge's October report, architect Aksel Solberg said the store will be smaller than the current garage.
Why everyone keeps mentioning the 5 & 10
The 2023 plan offered more. The 2026 plan won approval because of what it brings back. When Meehan presented in January, advisory committee members kept comparing his idea to the West Concord 5 & 10. That general-merchandise store stood where Debra's Next Door is now and closed in 2020. A March 2026 look back in The Concord Bridge remembers it as the place you went for whatever you needed that day, down to a fan on a hot afternoon.
"It's kind of nostalgic," Meehan told the committee, as The Concord Bridge reported in February. Committee member Nicole Hammond said the 5 & 10 "is missed dearly."
The 5 & 10 is not the only loss on that list. At the same meeting, according to the paper, Town Planner Elizabeth Hughes brought up the 2025 closing of Revolutionary Concord in Concord Center. Members also floated the idea of selling ice cream at the new store, since Reasons to be Cheerful closed its West Concord location in 2024. That adds up to three small, browsable shops gone in five years, and a gas station lot now being asked to fill some of the space they left.
The merchandise list fits that role. Meehan said the store could carry anything from natural soaps to household hardware. Planning Board minutes describe the concept as hardware, gifts, produce and toys. By October, project representatives were promising candy, local crafts and hardware-store items. The model is Meehan's Imperial Gas and Country Store in Mendon, which Solberg described as "an eclectic collection of goods."
What it will look like from the sidewalk
The design is meant to look like a village store. Planning Board minutes from March list a wraparound canopy and porch, clerestory windows, columns on masonry bases, decorative lights, cedar or composite siding, and copper-toned corrugated roofing on the canopy.
The ground around the building is changing too. The plans add landscaping along Nashoba Brook and more grass and trees across the lot. The February plan also proposed a crosswalk to Kenneth J. Dunn Square. According to the Planning Board's May 26 draft minutes, the site sits in the town's Floodplain Conservancy District, the application sought a special permit and site plan review, and town departments weighed in on drainage and snow storage.
Margot Kimball runs the Art for All community art center next door. She told The Concord Bridge in an email that the store seems like "a nice addition," as long as it doesn't block sunlight for the studios, and she said she looks forward to buying a bag of peanuts there "when I need a little boost." She also had a line about the design:
"not another cookie-cutter Cumbies"
The questions a tight corner still raises
The approval was not unanimous in spirit. A West Concord resident wrote a letter to the editor in February arguing that the original design did not suit the village's entrance or follow its design guidelines. The letter also warned that gas station and convenience store traffic could make an intersection the writer already considered hazardous even worse. It asked for limits on outdoor merchandise.
The town spent time on many of the same issues. At its May 26 meeting, the Planning Board discussed vehicle and pedestrian safety, delivery truck movements, the 18-foot drive aisle, and what the board called "the limitations created by existing driveway and intersection conditions." Box trucks are expected to make most deliveries, with larger beverage trucks now and then and fuel trucks using a dedicated route. In the draft minutes from that meeting, the proposed hours were 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. The board generally supported a condition turning off site lighting after closing, except for required security lighting. The project then went to the Zoning Board of Appeals, with a hearing listed on the June 11 agenda and continued on the July 9 agenda.
The layout changed during review. The October report says the project team added accessibility features and reworked parking and landscaping. It lists three regular spaces, one electric-vehicle charging space, a fifth space for either charging or regular parking, and an accessible space.
What happens first
Before any porch or canopy goes up, the underground gas tanks come out. Hughes told The Concord Bridge that removing them is the first phase of construction. Project representatives did not answer the paper's questions about timing, so there is no announced opening date.
The corner is also not the only change coming to this end of the village. The lot sits near Rideout Park and the MCI-Concord prison campus, which is being planned for redevelopment.
When a corner like this one changes, it can shift how buyers see the homes and streets around it. If you own in West Concord and want to know what a new neighbor at 166 Commonwealth might mean for your property's story, the Nancy Cole Team is glad to talk it through. Request a confidential market consultation.