SWAMPSCOTT — Family Doctors, LLC has plans to pave Paradise and put up a parking lot.
The company is seeking to purchase the property at 182 Paradise Road, a former gas station, to use for employee parking.
The site has been leased by Sunoco Oil Company from its current owner for many years, but Sunoco is in the process of purchasing it. The company has a contract with the doctors’ office to sell the property to them once the sale is complete.
“It’s a good solution for the town and a good solution for us,” said Dr. Peter Barker, one of the managing partners of the practice.
The Sunoco station, which had been abandoned for more than a decade, was demolished in March. Before the building was taken down, it had been collecting fines under Swampscott’s blighted property bylaw for more than a year.
Sunoco has sub-leased parking to Family Doctors for several years, allowing 15 to 20 employees to leave their cars at the site on weekdays and freeing up more space for patients to park in the practice’s lot instead of on the street.
Sunoco’s lease on the property was originally supposed to last through 2030, at which time the gas station would purchase the property, but Family Doctors learned recently that the sale would take place much sooner.
“We have a contract to purchase the property when Sunoco owns it, which we understand will be in the next month or so,” Barker said.
Family Doctors has contracted with a landscape architect to fix up the site, lay a parking lot, and complete some landscaping once they purchase the property.
In 2019, the town and the doctors’ office were at odds over the parking agreement after a Town Meeting approved the blighted property bylaw. While the then-building inspector had originally approved the plan, the new building inspector, Max Kasper, determined that the town’s zoning laws prohibited a business from providing parking more than 200 feet from their property, as the 182 Paradise site is.
Now, however, Barker says the company is working with the town to ensure that they are able to follow through with their plans.
Town Administrator Sean Fitzgerald said that he was glad that the abandoned building had finally come down, and that the site may soon have a new use.
“I’m eager to see the property brought to some productive reuse,” Fitzgerald said. “Family Doctors is a wonderful business in Swampscott and I’m pleased they’ve continued to expand and offer a broader range of medical services.”