Two Properties That Flank Harrows for Lease or Sale

has called Reading home since it opened here 80-plus years ago. The chicken pot pie maker is not moving.

But the properties on both sides of that Main Street business are for lease or sale.

The business that used to flank Harrows on both the south and the north -- fruit stand and garden center – moved this month into a larger building on a larger site a block south on Main Street.

Harrows owns the land on the north side of the Harrows building where Calareso’s displayed plants for sale, plus what is now a parking lot. Calareso’s also hung and placed plants for sale in front of Harrows.

Wally Arsenault, who co-owns Harrows with his brother Dan, is “looking for the right tenants that would be a good fit for us and for the town,” Arsenault told Patch Monday.

“It’s hard,” he said, “to say exactly what” that use might be. About a decade ago, they considered a Wendy’s for that site.

The Arsenaults are working with the town planner to redo the front of their building and landscape the property, Arsenault said.

Harrows makes all of its chicken pot pies here. Now they’re sold in Medford, Saugus and Tewksbury, in addition to Reading, Arsenault said. Wally and Dan hope to open a fifth storefront for pot pie sales, he said, in a year or so.

According to Arsenault, Charles Harrow opened a chicken eatery here in the 1930s. Reading is Harrows' headquarters, “our home base,” he said.

“We want to stay there ‘til I’m 100,” he said.

Arsenault graduated from in 1969. He said his parents grew up in Reading, his father died one and a half years ago. Charles Harrow died recently, according to Arsenault.

Calareso’s still owns its original farm stand site just south of Harrows – plus a three-bedroom house connected to the retail space. The house faces Hopkins Street.

The former farm stand includes a basement, retail space and some office space a floor higher, Joseph Calareso III told Patch Monday.

Parking might be shared with Harrows, as it had been, he said.

The retail space and the adjacent house must be sold together, Calareso said. They could be leased separately, he said.  If a small business went into the Main Street space, the owner could live right next door. The three-bedroom house has an open floor plan on the first floor.

The Calareso property is being marketed by  in North Reading, by Jim Demetri (978-407-1895) and Scott Oliver (508-633-3323).

Arsenault is taking calls about the Harrows property at 781-640-0416.