TIVERTON — Sometime within the next year the old and now vacant Grand Central Market building at 500 Main Road will be demolished and in its place will rise a new CVS Pharmacy.

The new structure will be the home for the existing CVS pharmacy now located next door at 496 Main Road. The pharmacy will occupy the foorprint of the old market that close in December 2006.

The large parking lot in front between the store from Main Road will remain.

The commercial reshuffling follows last month's decision by the town planning board, published April 8, to conditionally approve a master plan for the project and give the green light to the development. All that remains to be decided is the zoning issue of whether to allow a drive-through window.

Strip plaza to be renovated

Project plans also call for the renovation and upgrading of the strip plaza that lies just in front of the new CVS site.

The plaza at its north end houses Family Ties Restaurant. The same strip is also the home to the Cross I'd Cow ice cream parlor (closed for the season), a former insurance agency, and Joann's Music Center.

In early February, a fire which began in the attic of a vacant hair salon located in the middle of the small plaza, did $90,000 worth of damage to the structure.

John Bolton, lawyer for GB New England 2, the developer handling the CVS and strip plaza projects, said the demolition and construction will start in about four months. That is how much longer he estimates the permitting process will take.

After the permits are obtained, Mr. Bolton said construction of the new pharmacy and renovation of the strip plaza should take about six months "start to finish."

The new CVS pharmacy will have "a colonial type design," he said. It will be a one story building of approximately 13,000 square feet.

Main Road design a concern

Construction of the new pharmacy on the Grand Central Market site and the renovation of the strip plaza, will take place against a backdrop of concern for the future of Main Road and the design criteria that will govern its development.

Christopher P. Spencer, Tiverton's town planner, said some consideration had been given to requiring that the new CVS be located closer to Main Road, "to enhance the pedestrian friendliness of the facility." In support of that concept, he said, were members of the Conservation Commission among others.

"The idea is to not have streets defined by parking lots rather than buildings," he said. Nonetheless, the placement of the new building was ultimately allowed, away from the street and separated from it by the large parking lot.

Mr. Spencer said "we don't have design standards that are in ordinance form." making the existing standards had to enforce.

The new CVS pharmacy and the renovated strip plaza will continue to be leased from David Brothers Realty, which with GB New England 2 had joined in petitioning for the just-approved project. Morris and Herman David, brothers, founded Grand Central Market in Tiverton in 1966 and sold it in February, 2005. A little less than two years later the market went out of business.

Its last owner before it closed, Stuart W. Slawsby, said at the time it was serving about 5,000 customers weekly. There is now no supermarket in Tiverton and no grocery store on north Main Road. After the new CVS pharmacy is built, there will be two pharmacies within a few blocks of each other. A Rite Aid pharmacy is located at 677 Main Road, three-tenths of a mile south.

By Tom Killin Dalglish

tdalglish@eastbaynewspapers.com