NASHUA – Improved visibility is luring a Batteries Plus store a mile east on Amherst Street, replacing a long-closed Taco Bell across from Peters Nissan.

“Visibility and signage, that’s what we are looking for,” Jay Kolodze said. The Kolodze family, including Jay Kolodze’s parents, own or operate the four Batteries Plus franchises in New Hampshire.

The company was launched in Wisconsin in 1992 to sell replacement batteries, and now deals in a wide variety of batteries as well as light bulbs.

The Kolodze’s Batteries Plus stores includes a Manchester store on Willow Street that last month, Kolodze said, had the most sales of any of the company’s 570 stores, as well as the Nashua store in the Gold’s Gym Plaza, at 522 Amherst St.

The Nashua location “has been a challenge,” Kolodze said, because it is one of a half-dozen relatively small stores in a plaza dominated by Gold’s Gym and a currently closed nightclub. There’s little to catch the eye of drive-by traffic for smaller stores.

The former Taco Bell at 320 Amherst St. closed more than three years ago and has been vacant since. As a standalone building with an existing sign, it met the Kolodze’s needs, he said.

Workers are currently on the site, getting it ready for a move, which may happen “we hope in a month and a half.”

“We took it down to a shell and are starting over. It needs a roof, and all new everything, but the building’s in good shape,” Kolodze said.

The adjoining property was home to a Pizza Hut restaurant that closed several years ago and sat empty for a long time.

It was torn down last year and replaced with an AutoZone store.

Kolodze said his family hopes to subdivide their new Batteries Plus building and lease out about one third of the 3,000-square-foot building.

David Brooks can be reached at 594-6531 or dbrooks@nashua
telegraph.com. Also, follow Brooks on Twitter (@GraniteGeek).

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