It will be the California-based company’s second store in Boston, though it has several on the fringes of the city: two in Cambridge, one each in Brookline and Arlington, and a store planned at Assembly Square in Somerville. Overall, Trader Joe’s has 18 stores in Massachusetts.

The quirky grocery store chain — famous for its store-brand delicacies and Hawaiian-shirt-wearing staff — said Friday that it will open a 13,000-square-foot store on Western Avenue next year. The company will lease a portion of the ground floor of Continuum, a large apartment and retail building at Barry’s Corner, near Harvard Stadium.


Grocery stores have become popular tenants to anchor large mixed-use developments like Continuum. The developers of Ink Block credit the Whole Foods there with driving more foot traffic to the emerging pocket of the South End, while Roche Bros. is expanding on the ground floor of Millennium Tower and the Burnham Building in Downtown Crossing.

For Allston, it’s a shot of retail in a stretch of the neighborhood that’s seeing a flurry of new growth. Samuels & Associates opened Continuum, with its 325 apartments, last year. Across the street, Harvard recently started work on a half-million-square-foot science and engineering complex and is expanding pieces of its business school nearby. Meanwhile, a string of apartment buildings, restaurants, and a hotel are under development along Western Avenue out toward Watertown.

Tim Logan can be reached at tim.logan@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @bytimlogan.