Lechmere aimed for Burlington, landed in Woburn

Burlington already had two malls — The Burlington Mall (1968) and Burlington Arcade (1972), later known as the Caldor Mall. But 50 years ago this month, February 1975, a third mall was proposed at the other end of Burlington Mall Road, between South Bedford Street and Cambridge Street. The anchor stores were Lechmere, Ann & Hope and Montgomery Ward. The proponents were a colorful cast of characters:

• TRW, which had just bought United Carr Fasteners on South Bedford Street
• Developers identified in the Lowell Sun as Goodrich Development Corporation*
• Attorney Endicott Peabody, who was a former MA governor and a descendant of the very first MA governor. How can you deny him?

Here’s TRW going to bat for the new mall:

Town Meeting approved this, so why didn’t it happen? Residents gathered over 1,000 signatures and forced a reconsideration. The second time around, Town Meeting got cold feet.

We still got a Lechmere — sort of, eventually. In 1977, the Woburn Mall opened with KMart as the anchor. KMart was replaced by Lechmere in the early 80s, so Burlington and Lechmere at least became next-door neighbors.

Burlington’s aborted third mall instead became the Marriott and Burlington Woods office park. The so-called Caldor Mall was eventually de-malled and turned into Middlesex Commons. The Woburn Mall was de-malled and turned into Woburn Village.

The TRW name endures in Burlington thanks to TRW Field, a seven-acre park that TRW donated to the town in 1971 in exchange for rezoning a couple of acres across the street to help the company.

What else was happening 50 years ago this month?

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* Goodrich Development Corporation appears nowhere else in any US newspaper archives, which means the Sun probably botched the name. The paper misspelled United Carr and Form in Teak in another article about this mall proposal, and referred to this wannabe mall as a “second” mall when Burlington already had two, and also published incoherent and ungrammatical sentences that would flunk an elementary school English class.