Dive Brief:
- Applegreen has received approval to rebuild and operate 18 travel plazas along major Massachusetts roads, including the Massachusetts Turnpike, a company spokesperson confirmed to C-Store Dive.
- Applegreen will spend $750 million on improvements to the plazas as part of the 35-year lease agreement with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, according to the meeting’s presentation. The MDT’s board of directors officially accepted Applegreen's proposal during a June 18 hearing.
- This comes about six months after Dublin-based Applegreen revealed plans to spend over $1 billion to expand its travel center business in the U.S., U.K. and Ireland over the next five years.
Dive Insight:
In recent years, Applegreen focused on growing its travel center business in the U.S., where it has about 165 locations in 12 states across the East Coast and Midwest. It notably has spent $450 million remodeling travel centers in New Jersey and New York, as well as adding electric vehicle charging stations to these locations.
While those projects are continuing, Applegreen has shifted its focus to Massachusetts, where it will begin construction on six of the 18 travel plazas on Jan. 1, 2026, Scott Bosworth, chief of transit with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, said during the hearing.
Half of the sites will undergo a raze-and-rebuild, while the other nine will receive a “significant refurbishment,” Bosworth said.
In addition to the $750 million in improvements, Applegreen will pay the state a portion of revenue from these sites each year for the duration of the lease, with an annual minimum of $28.4 million.
Bosworth said in a June 11 meeting with the state’s Capital Programs Committee that the MDT chose Applegreen’s proposal over those of Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores, 7-Eleven, RaceTrac, Global Partners and Energy North Group, which operates the Haffner’s c-store banner on the East Coast.
Applegreen’s pitch included three types of plaza designs: coastal, metro and western, all of which will be deployed depending on which part of the state each store is in, according to the presentation. While each location will be slightly different, they’ll all focus on creating more dwell time for consumers, with 50% of each location’s floor plan being open to the traveling public. Comparatively, that’s only 10% for each location today, Bosworth said in his presentation.
Applegreen’s spokesperson declined to share specific details of the project, only noting that the company is excited for the new venture.
“We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to work with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and MassDOT to improve the travel experiences of drivers across Massachusetts for years to come,” the spokesperson said in a statement to C-Store Dive.
