Feature Stories

Alyssa Guzman did not grow up in Milford—or even New England. But the first time she saw the Milford Oval, she knew almost immediately that she wanted to make Milford home.

She and her fiancé had been living in Boston, where Guzman worked at the Four Seasons, and were looking for a place to settle down and, eventually, open the bakery she had long dreamed about. A local real estate agent took them around southern New Hampshire and showed them a house just a couple of minutes from downtown Milford.

Then they drove through the Oval.

“We both were like, ‘Oh my God, this is it,’” Guzman recalled. “‘This is it. We have to build the shop here.’”

They loved the house, too, and eventually bought it. But Guzman remembers walking back to the Oval, visiting a few of the shops and feeling that Milford offered something she had been looking for.

“I wanted someplace where I can know all the locals coming in and really feel that community,” she said.

It took about a year for the right storefront to appear. Guzman pursued two other spaces around the Oval, but neither worked out, and she eventually expanded her search to downtown Manchester.

“It wasn’t the same feeling,” she said.

The same day she turned down the Manchester location, the former Chaotic Lily storefront on Union Square became available.

She called immediately, saw it the next day and knew it was right.

That storefront is now preparing for its next chapter as Sugar Street Buns, where Guzman plans to serve cinnamon buns and other treats. But she is not the first shopkeeper to see something special in this particular corner of the Oval—or to value the kind of relationship with customers that a downtown shop can offer.

To understand the parallel, it helps to go back a few decades.

For decades, the same location was home to Savage’s Clothing. Irving Savage opened the business shortly after World War II as an Army-Navy outlet, selling army blankets, canteens, lister bags and other surplus goods. By the 1970s, the store had shifted toward men’s clothing, specializing in dungarees, work shirts and even the “Sta-Prest” slacks advertised in the newspapers of the day. In 1971, the familiar sign projecting from the front of the building was painted green and given a new message: “Savages Clothing.”

Irving’s son-in-law, Fred Boulter, took over the business in the late 1970s. By 1989, however, shopping habits had changed. Regional malls were drawing customers away from downtown stores, and Boulter also cited the familiar problem of parking around the Oval.

Still, the mall was not for him.

“It’s nice for shoppers to have a place to go where they can say, ‘Hi Fred. How are you?’ instead of getting that cold feeling,” he told the Nashua Telegraph as Savage’s prepared to close.

Thirty-seven years later, Guzman arrived at the same storefront with much the same idea. She had come to Milford looking for a place where she could know the locals and “really feel that community.”

Her road to Milford began in southwest Florida, where Guzman grew up in the kitchen of her Puerto Rican grandmother. Her grandmother had studied baking and cake decorating in Puerto Rico and, after moving to Florida, continued making wedding cakes and traditional Puerto Rican desserts from her home.

It was a different sort of bakery from the one Guzman is preparing to open on the Oval. There was no storefront. People simply called the house.

“People would call her and say, ‘Ana, I need a cake,’” Guzman recalled. “She would just make it.”

Guzman was one of 13 grandchildren, and the children did not go to daycare. They spent five or six days a week at their grandmother’s house, often all day. While her cousins found other things to do, Guzman kept finding her way into the kitchen, becoming her grandmother’s unofficial assistant.

“I was always in the kitchen with her,” she said. “I absolutely loved it.”

She knew early that she wanted to become a pastry chef. A month after graduating from high school in 2018, Guzman moved to Chicago for an intensive six-month program at the French Pastry School. She later worked for noted chocolatier Norman Love in southwest Florida, in fine-dining restaurants and eventually at the Four Seasons in Boston.

After eight years working in pastry, Guzman had made everything from bonbons and sorbet to elaborate plated desserts. But when it came time to open a bakery of her own, she kept coming back to cinnamon buns.

That focus will be reflected in her own menu. The shop will offer four or five buns at a time, with sweet and savory choices. Guzman has already created everything from a pumpkin caramel bun to pepperoni pizza and spinach-and-artichoke versions. A few other baked goods, including gluten-free choices, will be available, but this is, after all, Sugar Street Buns.

Some of her grandmother’s influence may find its way into the pastry case as well. Guzman hopes to experiment with Puerto Rican and tropical flavors, although she is still learning that New Englanders can have rather firm ideas about which flavors belong to which seasons.

Guzman also wants the shop to feel connected to the town she chose. Milford artists Sarah McCarthy and Elizabeth Scargill are creating artwork for the bakery, and Guzman hopes to give other local artists and small businesses space to show or sell what they create. Another corner will hold a free lending library with books for adults and children.

In many ways, Milford had already begun returning the enthusiasm Guzman felt on that first drive through the Oval. Other business owners offered advice, and town officials went out of their way to guide her through the process. Guzman described the building inspector as “ridiculously helpful,” showing up at prospective locations to walk her through what each would require.

“The town totally took me in,” Guzman said. “I didn’t expect such a warm welcome.”

Now she hopes to return some of it.

“I want to help people as much as everyone has been helping me,” Guzman said. “I want to be involved in the neighborhood, the community ... and I really want to be a part of Milford’s growth.”

In 1989, Fred Boulter valued a store where customers could walk in and say, “Hi Fred. How are you?” Nearly four decades later, Alyssa Guzman came to Milford looking for a place where customers might not remain strangers for long.

The Oval, it seems, still has room for that kind of shop.