NASHUA – A former Market Basket at Somerset Plaza, emptied when the grocery store moved to a bigger location in the same strip mall, may become home to an LA Fitness health club.

The proposal also seeks to build a stand-alone, drive-thru Chik-fil-A restaurant in the plaza’s parking area along the Amherst Street entrance.

The proposal by DeMoulas Super Markets Inc., which owns the plaza at 375 Amherst St., will be considered by the city Planning Board on Thursday .

This would be the first LA Fitness franchise in New Hampshire. The California-based chain has more than 300 clubs in the U.S. and Canada.

If approved, the project would be part of a flurry of redevelopment and construction in retail sites all along Route 101A between the Everett Turnpike and Somerset Parkway.

Those projects include the state’s first Whole Foods grocery store coming to Turnpike Plaza, where it replaced yet another Market Basket; a credit union replacing an aging plaza that once housed a handful of businesses; tenants finally coming to a long-empty plaza called Green Fall Marketplace; a 118-room hotel run by Residence Inn being built behind Somerset Plaza; a new plaza proposed to replace the former Nashua Motor Express building; and new tenants in Somerset Plaza itself, including the return of longtime Nashua restaurant Chen Yang Li.

The proposal for Somerset Plaza answers a question about the empty space that many have been asking since Market Basket shut its 51,000-square-foot store on June 18 after 23 years and opened an 84,000-square-foot store at the other end of the plaza. The new Market Basket replaced a Kmart-Sears store, but there was no word about what would replace the old Market Basket.

The plan seeks to tear down the shell of the former Market Basket and replace it with a 45,000-square-foot building, about 6,600 square feet smaller than the existing footprint.

The plan also includes a sidewalk along Amherst Street in front of the plaza, a sidewalk leading into the plaza along the west side of the entrance road and a sidewalk inside the property, from Trafalgar Square to the shopping center.

The 5,000-square-foot Chick-fil-A would be the second restaurant from that national chain in New Hampshire, and the first stand-alone. The other is in the Pheasant Lane Mall food court.

David Brooks can be reached at 594-6531 or dbrooks@nashua
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