"Salem will never be on our radar." That's what Whole Foods told Tuscan Village developer Joe Faro when he first pitched the grocery chain on a Salem, NH location, back when he was trying to get city planners to approve the apartments that would eventually make the deal possible. Three years later, on July 22, 2026, Whole Foods opened its first Salem store, a 34,900-square-foot location at 24 Via Toscana inside Tuscan Village, the fifth in New Hampshire.
Whole Foods was wrong about Salem. But the town's other Main Street, the one with the actual name Main Street, is quietly proving the chain half right. While Tuscan Village keeps adding reasons to stay, the parking lot across from Tuscan Kitchen's old storefront is where the town is testing whether the original downtown can still generate any pull on its own.
The Grocery Store That Almost Didn't Happen
The Whole Foods deal only worked because Faro agreed to build 300 more apartments than he'd originally planned, stacking the grocery store underneath housing the same way Whole Foods has done in redevelopment projects elsewhere in the country. The finished building, the one now holding both the store and the Epicurean apartments above it, runs to roughly 500,000 square feet, making it one of the largest structures in Tuscan Village's 170-acre footprint, the same acreage where Triple Crown winners once ran when it was Rockingham Park racetrack.
The store itself leans hard into New England sourcing. More than 800 local products from around 180 regional suppliers line the shelves, including tomatoes and squash from Brookdale Fruit Farm, ice cream from Walpole Creamery, maple products from Ben's Sugar Shack, and bacon and sausage from North Country Smokehouse. Whole Foods marked the opening with a food donation to Merrimack Valley Food Bank, which already runs regular surplus pickups from the chain's other locations.
For a Salem resident, this is the first grocery option inside Tuscan Village itself, not adjacent to it. Errands that used to mean a drive to Market Basket or over the line to Nashua now have a walkable option sitting under an apartment building that didn't exist five years ago.
The Bars Went In Before The Paperwork Did
Grocery shopping isn't the only thing that changed at Tuscan Village this summer. A new outdoor space called Sun Cruiser Social Club opened in front of Tavern in the Square, built around two bars made from shipping containers, a turf field with cornhole and a giant checkerboard, and a run of firepits and Adirondack chairs for anyone who wants to sit rather than shop.
The pace of approval tells you something about how fast this part of town moves. Salem's planning board signed off on the plaza without requiring a full site plan review, and at least one board member noted, during the meeting, that the shipping containers had already been delivered to the property before the vote happened. Sun Cruiser is expected to stay open through a New Year's Eve celebration before closing for the season, which means it isn't a one-weekend pop-up. It's a four-season amenity built into a development that keeps adding them.
What Main Street Gave Up To Get There
None of this happened in a vacuum. Tuscan Kitchen, the restaurant that anchors Tuscan Village's dining identity and now sits at 19 Via Toscana, opened in 2010 as Salem's first authentic artisan Italian restaurant, and it did so on Main Street. As Faro built out Tuscan Village, he moved Tuscan Kitchen out of that original storefront and into the new development, trading a single Main Street address for a spot inside a 170-acre destination with its own hotel, cooking school, and now a grocery store next door.
That left an empty storefront on the town's oldest commercial corridor, in a location residents would still recognize by what used to be there rather than what's there now.
The Town's Answer Is A Parking Lot And A One-Year Lease
This past August, the Salem Town Council took up a different kind of retail experiment. The town leases a parking lot on Main Street, directly across from the former Tuscan Kitchen storefront, and officials are now exploring whether to allow food trucks to operate there on a pilot basis. Vendors would need to secure their own permits, licenses, inspections, and insurance naming the town as an additional insured, and the town has said it's still fielding interest before confirming any schedule.
The lease terms give a sense of scale. The town's current agreement to lease that lot runs from October 1, 2026 through September 30, 2027, at an annual rent of $8,947.08, a routine renewal reflecting the standard 2 percent increase the council directs each cycle.
| Tuscan Village (Whole Foods building) | Main Street (food truck pilot lot) | |
|---|---|---|
| Footprint | Roughly 500,000 sq ft, grocery plus apartments | One parking lot |
| Anchor draw | First Whole Foods in Salem | Vendors still applying, no fixed schedule |
| Annual cost to the town | N/A, privately developed | $8,947.08 lease renewal |
Put side by side, the numbers say plainly what the two ends of town are actually working with. One side is building a grocery-anchored apartment tower. The other is deciding whether a parking lot can support a few food trucks on weekends.
What Still Happens On Main Street This Month
Main Street hasn't gone quiet, even without its old restaurant anchor. On Saturday, September 26, Douglas & Johnson Funeral Home hosts its Second Annual Cars & Cans Car Show and Food Drive at 214 Main Street, from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. Last year's inaugural event collected hundreds of pounds of food for area pantries, and organizers are hoping to beat that total this time. Admission is free with a food or cash donation, and spectator parking is set up at Woodbury Middle School.
The rest of September's calendar splits along the same lines the town has been drawing all summer. On the Tuscan Village side:
- The Salem NH Farmers Market runs every Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. through October, set up next to The Field at DICK'S House of Sport at The Mall at Rockingham Park.
- Tuscan Village hosts a Wine Social at Epicurean on September 9 at 5 p.m., with wine samples from local wineries and light bites.
- The 6th Annual Wine for Wags benefit takes place September 20, pairing wine with the town's dog-friendly community spirit.
And on Friday, September 11, the town holds its annual Memorial Ceremony at the Salem Town Common at 8:30 a.m., marking the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
Canobie Lake Park adds its own seasonal marker to the month. The park pulls back from daily summer hours to a weekend schedule built around Screeemfest, its Halloween-themed run through September and October, a rhythm the family-owned park has kept since three families bought it in 1958. It's a reminder that Salem has always run two models of gathering place at once, the multigenerational, slow-grown kind and the newly built, fast-approved kind, long before Tuscan Village or Whole Foods entered the picture.
Whether the Main Street food truck pilot turns into something permanent is still an open question, one the town says it will answer as it gathers more vendor interest. What's already clear is that Salem isn't choosing between its old downtown and its new one. It's running both experiments at the same time, and this September is the month you can watch them side by side.
Curious what any of this means for your own address in Salem, whether you're weighing a move, sizing up a sale, or just want a straight read on what's changing block by block? Connie DiStasio has been tracking these shifts as they happen. Let's Connect.
