AMHERST — Herrell’s Ice Cream, a mainstay on Old South Street at Thorne’s Marketplace in downtown Northampton, will be opening a pop-up shop in the North Square at the Mill District in North Amherst by the end of July, with plans to have a permanent location there in the near future.

The arrival of the ice cream shop on Cowls Road in North Amherst this summer means that people visiting Mill River Recreation Area, Cherry Hill Golf Course and Puffer’s Pond, as well as North Amherst Library throughout the year, will have a place to get their ice cream fix a short distance away.

Judy Herrell, who owns Herrell’s, explained that the decision to expand the business, founded in 1980, comes while looking for a site with a good mix of both restaurants and retailers.

“We expect it to be a delicious place to eat ice cream and frozen desserts of all kids, plus a cool place to work and shop for all. Puns intended,” Herrell said in a statement.

Herrell’s makes its ice cream in small batches in Northampton, one, 3-gallon tub at a time. It has more than 400 gourmet flavors of ice cream, as well as dairy free No-Moo frozen desserts and frozen yogurt and sorbet. Company founder Steve Herrell introduced the concept of “Smoosh-in” in which popular cookies and candies were ground up and placed in the ice cream.

Cinda Jones, president of W.D. Cowls, has at times described her vision for the North Square at the Mill District as bringing back “the old American downtown,” and an ice cream parlor has been seen as an important element.

The North Square already includes Provisions, which sells craft beers and fine wines, the Carefree Cakery bake shop, Futura Coffee, 3 Amigo’s Restaurant and the Mill District General Store, while at the Riverside Park Shopping Plaza on Montague Road are Big Basket International Market, Amherst House of Pizza and Cumberland Farms.

When first opened, Herrell’s will use space formerly occupied by Graze Craze charcuterie boards, said Arthur Haskins, vice president of real estate for W.D. Cowls. 

That will be the site until the permanent space for Herrell’s is ready between Carefree Cakery, which opened last summer, and Provisions, recently relocated from the stand-alone Cow Barn to a corner spot across from the Trolley Barn.

While downtown Amherst  has had dedicated ice cream shops over the years, including Bart’s Homemade and Baskin-Robbins, similar enterprises have largely been absent from North Amherst, though Big Guys Soft Serve, located behind Big Guys Liquors, made a go of selling ice cream, hot dogs and kielbasa dogs in the early 2000s, and in the mid 1980s the Riverside Park plaza had a short-lived ice cream and popcorn shop called Shimmy’s.

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com