COURTESY PHOTO
An artist’s rendering of Essex Landing on Route 1.
BY THOMAS GRILLO
SAUGUS — At 18, Michael Barsamian quit his first year at Northeastern University and enrolled in beauty school.
The decision paid off. Today, he manages 700 employees and 25 salons that generate more than $25 million annually. Not bad for a business that was launched in 1971 with a $2,000 loan.
You’d think that would be enough for the 70-year-old CEO and founder of Lord’s & Lady’s. But he and partner Michael Touchette of Lynnfield have begun work on Essex Landing. When completed in 2018, Essex Landing on Route 1 will feature a mix of apartments, hotels and retail at a site best known for the Miniature Golf & Batting Cages and the iconic orange dinosaur.
The $70 million development will include 250 one-bedroom apartments in four buildings, a pair of hotels, ground floor retail and garage parking in seven buildings.
The partners bought a vacant 11-acre site next to the Miniature Golf in 2013 for $1.4 million, and they plan to close on the 2-acre golf parcel in August for an undisclosed price. The entertainment center is expected to close later this year.
Upon entering the hilly site from Route 1, there will be a 50-unit apartment building with a 14,000-square-foot restaurant on the ground floor. Next is Essex Landing Hotel, a 150-room facility operated by the Saunders Group that owns the Lenox Hotel. Another 130-room extended-stay hotel, whose operator has not been chosen, follows. There will be a six-story garage that will serve the complex, and three more apartment buildings containing up to 200 apartments. The 850-square-foot units are slated to be priced at $2,200 per month.
A 100-unit apartment building and two others with 40 to 50 units will be located at the tallest part of the site.
“We think that by having all one-bedrooms, we will attract Logan Airport employees, pilots, flight attendant and casino workers who will be just 3.7-miles away in Everett,” he said.
“It’s also a place for empty nesters who have big houses in Saugus who want to downsize.”
While Barsamian enjoys real estate, he completed an apartment complex in West Roxbury a few years ago on the MBTA’s commuter rail station, this is his last project.
“I’m living the dream, but this is my last hurrah,” he said.
Thomas Grillo can be reached at [email protected].