Eclectic business mix blossoms at Cottonwood

BY JASON STARR Observer staff

It’s a week of grand openings on Cottonwood Drive.

Below a cluster of apartments with more on the way, the newly minted road off Route 2 in the Cottonwood Crossing development is now fully lined with street-level businesses.

Community Bank kicked things off in 2020, moving in its corporate offices and a local branch as the first phase of Cottonwood Crossing began construction to become the first commer- cial element of the neighborhood.

A year later, Jr’s brought a second location of its long-established Italian restaurant, complete with a bar and gameroom. More recently, a flurry of tenant signings culminates this week with the opening of three health-and-wellness-oriented businesses: Align Cycling, The Body Lab pilates studio and Greene Mountain Nutrition and Smoothies.

Along with Allen Pools and Spas, Champion Comics and Coffee, Vermont Integrative MD (Dr. Sepinoud Basil), Sante Salon and a Canon sales office, which all opened over the past several months, the first-floor commercial space in the first phase of the neighborhood is full.

“It’s exciting. I think we have a nice synergy of businesses here,” said Rory Malone, owner of Champion Comics and Coffee, which, at seven months, is one of the longer-tenured businesses on the street.

Newly arriving business owners, like Sarah DeGray of Align Cycling and Ryan Greene of Greene Mountain Nutrition and Smoothies, have been getting to know each other as they put the see COTTONWOOD page 8