HADLEY — A Route 9 building that for 40 years served as the well-known farm stand Stan’s Drive-In, featuring a large “Stan the Vegetable Man” sign that helped attract customers to the business, was demolished Monday to make way for a new dental office.
The Valley Dentists, Dr. Ambreen Bawa and Dr. Sumeet Saxena, who currently practice at 138 Russell St., are planning to construct the 4,600-square-foot office on the 1.59-acre site.
In January, the Planning Board approved the project’s site plans and stormwater management plan and granted a special permit for a business use in the aquifer. The Valley Dentists, as 200 Russell Realty Management LLC, acquired the property in July for $680,000 from Leon Szymborn.
Hadley resident Stanley Murdza opened Stan’s Drive-In in 1948 as a restaurant serving hamburgers, and counted among its most famous clientele President John F. Kennedy.
From the 1960s until 1998, when Murdza’s granddaughter took over the business, Stan’s Drive-In sold a variety of fruits and vegetables that he and other farmers grew, including asparagus, corn, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots and beets.
The business’s famed sign, featuring an anthropomorphic caricature made from an assortment of vegetables, including a pumpkin for a head, was removed in 2006.
Though the property has been vacant for much of the past decade, it was home to a small antiques store and Sully’s restaurant in the late 1990s and early 2000s.