Property that was once a Bertucci’s pizza restaurant near Central Square in Cambridge – and still has a restaurant and bar in a neighboring storefront – sold Friday at auction for $5.8 million plus around $160,000 of assumed unpaid municipal fees, said an attendee at the 11 a.m. foreclosure event.
Bertucci’s closed at 805 Main St., The Port, in October 2023 after the chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in late 2022. Though the chain was founded in Somerville in 1981 and had several locations in Cambridge and Somerville – in Harvard Square and at Alewife, as well as in Davis Square and this location – the nearest in the franchise now is in Medford.
Cloud & Spirits opened at 795 Main St. in May 2021, taking over space that was once Cuchi Cuchi, a 19-year-old tapas restaurant that the Covid pandemic closed in May 2020. After two years, Cloud & Spirits said owners announced a shift in energies from Korean-infused restaurant to event space with a menu ranging from nori fries to noodles and flatbreads.
Cloud & Spirits hosted the auction, taking it out of the summer heat. But of the dozen bidders, only around one-third took active part in the bidding and it lasted all of 10 minutes after a reading of the legal documents.
The starting price was placed at $5 million, but no one bit. The auctioneer reset at $4 million and the price rose from there, mainly by quarter-million increments, said Gary Mello, a Cambridge resident who attended after noticing the auction advertised in the Wall Street Journal.
Mello said he was “baffled that such a property hit the auction block in the first place. I don’t understand how it got to the auction phase” along such an important connection between Central Square, MIT and Kendall Square – “the vena cava of Cambridge.”
Being “totally underwhelmed by the price,” Mello wondered if “bidders knew better” and were showing caution about extra costs lurking within or attached to the site as they considered development options.
The auctioneers’ description of the property hinted at none of that.
“This high-visibility property features a 6,000-square-foot single-story building on a 9,866-square-foot lot at the corner of Cherry Street, currently configured as two commercial units – a former restaurant and a retail space,” auctioneer Sullivan & Sullivan says in its prospectus. “The site also includes rare on-site parking and a rooftop billboard, offering additional revenue potential.”
The property is “a rare opportunity to acquire a well-located asset in one of the most active commercial corridors in Cambridge,” said Marianne Sullivan, president of Sullivan & Sullivan.
The building, with an assessed value of $2.6 million and a last sale in March 2019 at $4.3 million, is subject to Central Square Overlay provisions, the Sullivan & Sullivan auctioneer said on the scene. The 1917 building is considered to be in excellent overall condition in a city of Cambridge assessment conducted this year.
A Central Square rezoning won’t be grappled with until the spring of 2026, and that could affect what happens with the foreclosed parcel and many other properties in the square, city councillor Cathie Zusy said Saturday. The properties might surge in value, and vacancies fill, when the rezoning is in place and the rules likely change around commercial and residential height and density.
Owners have reason to “sit on their properties” until the rezoning is voted, Zusy said.
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Its still confusing. Bertuccis was busy and owner run. They got pushed out then this goes to auction. What really happened.
Will the historic commission also block this being redeveloped and used claiming “Its a historic Bertucci’s”?
It was a really good Bertucci’s.