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Recovery along Route 2

In Concord, business — and life — as usual

Four communities show the uneven recovery since the recession ended in June 2009

The affluence of Concord and its surrounding communities shielded it from the worst of the recession.Dina Rudick/Globe Staff

CONCORD — Steeped in colonial and literary history, this affluent suburb, with its graceful 18th and 19th century buildings, appears untouched by the last recession.

Tourists stroll through the downtown amid quaint shops selling hardware, clothing, cookware, toys, books, and other goods. The outdoor restaurant patio at Concord’s Colonial Inn, festooned in colorful patriotic bunting, is filled with patrons eating mid-afternoon meals. Homes are routinely selling for $1 million or more.

“We’re ultimately a wealthy town surrounded by a lot of other wealthy towns,” said Rebecca Bilodeau, the long-time owner of the Grasshopper Shop, a women’s boutique store on Main Street in downtown Concord. “We weren’t as affected by the recession as other towns.”

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Five years after the downturn ended, this town of 18,000 is doing as it usually does, quite nicely. The unemployment rate has slipped under 4 percent, more than a point below the state average. The housing market has recovered. Median household income, at $121,000, is approaching twice the state median.

That’s not to say that Concord was completely unaffected by the recession. Unemployment jumped to 6.6 percent in 2009, below the state average of 8.4 percent at the same time, but double the pre-recession level.

Professionals making six-figure salaries suddenly lost jobs at their companies in Boston and Cambridge. Business quickly dried up for local firms. A spattering of home foreclosures took place.

“It was a roller-coaster time,” recalls Robert Prestidge, co-owner of Concord Cookware, a shop on Walden Street in the downtown. As the financial crisis intensified in the fall of 2008, Prestidge said, sales of high-end appliances dropped as nervous customers tightened their belts and stuck to “only basic purchases, like spatulas and wooden spoons.”

Bilodeau’s Grasshopper shop saw a 25 percent decline in business. Other Concord shop owners reported similar plunges.

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But for Concord, the recession was more like a brief, sharp shock that gradually wore off as the state and national economies slowly stabilized and improved, they say.

“Once the downturn ended for us [around 2010] there was a sort of reboot,” said Frank Serio, general manager of the 56-room Colonial Inn, which has two restaurants. Today, the Colonial Inn’s business, helped by both domestic and foreign visitors, is about 10 percent above press-recession levels, said Serio.

Other Concord businesses report that they’ve largely recovered from the recession, though there’s still nervousness about the long-term strength of the US economy. “People are jittery and watching their costs very closely,” said David Anderson, owner of the Main Streets Market & Café in Concord’s downtown.

Still, commercial and retail rents are on the rise, as are housing prices. Developers are responding. In West Concord, construction recently commenced on the Brookside Square, a $32 million mixed-use development with 74 luxury apartments and 36,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial and office space.

As with other red-hot housing markets across Eastern Massachusetts, high demand and short supplies of homes for sale have sent home prices soaring in Concord. By the end of last year, the median home price there hit $857,000, easily exceeding its pre-recession high of $725,000 in 2005, according to data from the Warren Group, a Boston real estate research firm.

Julie Dolan, a real estate agent at William Raveis Real Estate, said the trend shows no sign of abating. So far this year, the median price of homes sold in Concord is a jaw-dropping $1.4 million, according to data compiled by Dolan. That’s nearly double the median sales price in 2005, the peak of the last housing boom.

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Despite the hefty price tags, Dolan said multiple offers, sales above asking prices, and all-cash purchases are common these days. Dolan said one three-bedroom ranch home was recently put on the market at $699,000 — and quickly sold for $770,000.

“People have money,” said Dolan. “They’re coming out of Boston and Cambridge to Concord with money — and they’re spending that money.”


Jay Fitzgerald can be reached at jayfitzmedia@gmail.com.