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May 15, 2023

Hartford’s Noble Gas prepares for explosive growth with unique combination of amenities

HBJ PHOTO | STEVE LASCHEVER Michael Frisbie and Abdul Tammo, co-owners of Noble Gas Inc., stand in front of a new service center in Sturbridge, Mass., which will combine unique amenities, including a high-end deli, quality coffee and ice cream shops, latest-generation electric vehicle chargers and more.
By Michael Puffer
Gas stations and apartments? Noble offers that
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Michael Frisbie and Abdul Tammo grew up more than 5,000 miles apart in different corners of the world but have formed a family-like partnership behind a rapidly evolving line of service stations set for explosive growth.

Over the past decade, the partners have built or refurbished a dozen gas stations under their Hartford-based Noble Gas Inc. brand, aiming to offer clean and friendly service that is a cut above the competition.

Now, they are building a new generation of larger service centers with more amenities, designed to accommodate future driving and consumption habits.

The centers will blend traditional offerings with a high-end deli, quality coffee and ice cream shops, latest-generation electric vehicle chargers and more, with indoor seating and outdoor picnic areas furnished with aesthetic gas stoves.

The first three developments — with a combined cost north of $30 million — are scheduled to open this summer, in Enfield, East Lyme and Sturbridge, Massachusetts, according to Frisbie, Noble Gas’ co-owner.

Noble is on pace to add 20 stations over the coming five years, Frisbie said, including in Hamden, East Hartford and Windsor.

“What we are doing now is not your typical gas station,” Frisbie said in a recent interview. “It’s way more. It’s an automotive fueling station we are building for the future of transportation.”

An atypical pair

Frisbie, 54, comes from a blue-collar household in Westfield, Massachusetts, and went to work at 13, cleaning up around the machine shop that employed his father. By 15, he was running CNC machines and drill presses.

Tammo, 55, is an ethnic Kurd who grew up in northern Syria and worked in a small-scale apartment development before immigrating to the U.S. in 1997 seeking opportunity.

“We make really good partners,” Frisbie said. “We trust each other completely. My kids and his kids are having a sleepover tonight. Our families are connected in a way you wouldn’t typically see.”

Tammo said he immigrated at age 29, arriving at JFK Airport in New York with no English and only $500. He immediately went to work manning registers and stocking shelves at the Seaside Market, a Bridgeport grocery owned by a friend from Syria.

Later, he would also help run convenience stores with gas pumps that were leased by the same friend.

In 2006, Tammo and friends pooled resources to lease an XtraMart in Willimantic. Eventually, Tammo was a commissioned agent for 20 service stations — meaning he leased service plazas and ran the convenience stores while his landlords kept gas-sale profits.

Frisbie put himself through Nichols College, a small business school in Dudley, Massachusetts. He graduated in 1990 and went to work as a financial analyst for MassMutual.

In 1995, Frisbie moved to Atlanta and took a job scouting and permitting locations for RaceTrac Petroleum, a service-station chain located across the southern U.S.

About four years later, Frisbie took a job as a real estate manager with Shell Oil Co., to be closer to family. Within a year, he had 10 locations under purchase agreements and shepherded two building sites through the permitting process. But Shell pulled the plug on the expansions and Frisbie opted to leave the company in late 2000.

Three years later, when his first son was born, Frisbie launched Hunter Development Co., which developed and then leased to other operators service stations in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

But Frisbie was convinced he could do more.

“I was finding the best sites and then getting them permitted, and I said: ‘Why am I not doing this for myself?’”

Frisbie was developing a Stratford location for Alliance Energy when he got a call from Tammo, asking if he could buy the site.

It was already spoken for, but that was the start of conversations that eventually led to their partnership.

EV infrastructure

In 2013, Frisbie and Tammo teamed up on a $1.4-million purchase and renovation of an 1,800-square-foot convenience store with four pumps and a Dunkin’ store on a half-acre in Hartford’s North Meadows.

It went so well, the pair invested in a second station in Danbury, then one in New Britain, and so on.

In 2021, Noble opened its 12th station on Farmington Avenue in New Britain at a cost of $4.2 million. The station includes a 4,276-square-foot convenience store with an embedded Dunkin’ and 12 pumps.

The grander stations under construction include one off Interstate 95 in East Lyme, another on Elm Street in Enfield and the third a short distance off Interstate 84 in Sturbridge.

These 8,500-square-foot fueling centers will feature Nardelli’s Grinder Shoppe and Fuel America Coffee House franchises, as well as Frisbie’s Dairy Barn ice cream shops.

RENDERING | CONTRIBUTED
A rendering of the new Noble service stations planned in Enfield, East Lyme and Sturbridge, Mass.

The Enfield location will include a Soapy Noble Express car wash. Noble is building a freestanding car wash in Niantic, near its East Lyme location. The company opened its first two car washes, in East Windsor and Feeding Hills, Massachusetts, late last year.

Frisbie said he plans to build car washes at or near all new and existing Noble stations, including in New Britain, Enfield, Niantic and Norwich.

One will shortly break ground in Groton.

The company has also incorporated electric vehicle chargers in all existing locations, and its newest service centers will each host eight charging stations under canopied hoods. They will be capable of completely refueling electric vehicles in under 20 minutes, Frisbie said.

Noble also plans to build a $7-million, 16,000-square-foot electric vehicle discovery center next to its Sturbridge service station, which will allow motorists to learn about electric vehicle ownership and potentially test drive vehicles from various manufacturers.

It plans to build an electric vehicle car dealership and service center next to its Newington service center.

Part of the goal, Frisbie said, is to help build out the state’s electric vehicle infrastructure.

“I believe EV cars are coming. … This is an investment in the future of transportation,” Frisbie said of the discovery center.

Finding good partners

Frisbie said the aim is to be best-in-class for all offerings, with better products in nicer locations, blending fuel-ups with other needs that would otherwise take multiple stops.

Noble is also developing a web application that will allow gas customers to gain loyalty points toward free food, coffee, ice cream and car washes from the company’s growing network.

“My target market is the mom in the minivan,” Frisbie said. “She wants a clean, safe, well-lit environment where she can get a good-quality product and offering for herself and her family. We want people to come to Noble for their daily lives. They come there for their coffee and breakfast, they come there for lunch or in the evening.”

Frisbie said Nardelli’s took some convincing to allow franchises in Noble’s newest service stations. The Italian deli traces its roots to three immigrant brothers who arrived in Waterbury in 1914. Nardelli’s started offering franchises in 2004, and there are now 15 Connecticut locations.

“When we got the initial phone call, we were skeptical,” admitted Marco Nardelli, franchising CEO and a co-owner of Nardelli’s. “We are used to one-off (locations). This wasn’t conventional.”

But he eventually was sold on Noble’s plans for upscale service stations, as well as Tammo and Frisbie as individuals.

“I think it’s a good fit, because they are a family business and we are a family business,” Nardelli said. “He and Abdul are good people. It’s not just a business concept. It’s the moral and ethical standards we both have that will drive us forward.”

Town leaders have also embraced Noble’s vision.

East Hartford Mayor Michael Walsh said the company’s planned location in his town offers a “powerful combination” of amenities that will attract customers throughout the day.

“It will serve the north side of town very well and access to the highway is excellent, so it will be a busy place,” Walsh said. “The construction will remove a few obsolete buildings as well. So, all in all, I love this combination.”

‘Quickly profitable’

Over the past decade, Tammo and Frisbie have tapped financing from North Brookfield Savings Bank, Springfield-based Freedom Credit Union and Newtown Savings Bank. Noble turned to Liberty Bank for the three service stations currently under construction and anticipates using the Middletown-based lender for future projects, Frisbie said.

Stephen Roche, Liberty’s market president for Greater Hartford and regional manager of commercial banking, said Noble is attractive as an innovative and forward-thinking owner-operator.

The company has a proven knack for opening locations that are quickly profitable, Roche said.

“We like Michael as an entrepreneur and visionary, particularly as it relates to this industry,” Roche said. “His business model is sound, and I think he has a vision for the future that a lot of other locations don’t have.”

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