Signs of optimism in E.P.

SETTING THE STANDARD: Phil Tirrell, owner of Weichert Realtors – Tirrell Realty in East Providence, also serves as chairman of the economic-development committee of the East Providence Area Chamber of Commerce. He sees an S&P debt upgrade for the city as having positive reverberations. / PBN PHOTO/DAVID LEVESQUE
SETTING THE STANDARD: Phil Tirrell, owner of Weichert Realtors – Tirrell Realty in East Providence, also serves as chairman of the economic-development committee of the East Providence Area Chamber of Commerce. He sees an S&P debt upgrade for the city as having positive reverberations. / PBN PHOTO/DAVID LEVESQUE

Standard & Poor’s recent upgrading of East Providence’s general-obligation debt rating from BB+ to A is giving some members of the local business community reason for optimism after struggling for years with the city’s building fiscal stress.
“It’s important because the recognition of the city’s improvement is from the national level,” said Laura McNamara, executive director of the East Providence Area Chamber of Commerce. “The upgrade from Standard & Poor’s is having a great impact on morale among business leaders.”
Starting in 2008, McNamara began noticing businesses in the city buckling under national and local financial pressures.
“By 2011, it was really shaky. Businesses were closing up,” said McNamara, who has led the Chamber for 16 years. “Membership in the Chamber kept dropping. I’d find out the Chamber members were going out of business, especially the ones with 10 or less employees.”
Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee in 2011 appointed Maj. Stephen M. Bannon of the state police as fiscal overseer for the city, which was weighed down with more than $10 million in debt as well as tens of millions of dollars in unfunded long-term liabilities. In December of that year, the state appointed a five-member budget commission to help the city achieve fiscal stability.
Standard & Poor’s earlier this month credited the commission for adopting stronger fiscal-management practices.
Many members of the city’s business community welcomed the commission as a necessary step toward improving the local business climate. The commission was dissolved last month following the state’s determination that the city’s fiscal health had improved.
Improvement in the business community, however, is still a slow process, McNamara said.
“I didn’t hear of anyone expanding in the last four or five years. It was more about just trying to keep operating on a daily basis – ‘I got through today, now let me get through tomorrow,’ ” said McNamara. “Now I think we’re on the upswing.
“I’m hoping that with this increase in the bond rating, it shows the city is being more responsible and it will bring more confidence to business owners so they will stay and expand,” she said, pointing to promising developments in the city that include Tockwotton On the Waterfront, a senior-living community that opened in January, the residential and retail Village on the Waterfront and a vision of creating a waterfront arts and culture district. A major development for East Providence was the arrival this year of Eaton Corp., a manufacturer of components for the aerospace industry, which has approximately 200 employees in the city, said East Providence Planning Director Jean Boyle.
Eaton moved its operations to East Providence from a Warwick facility that was damaged in the March 2010 floods. The relocation was spurred by a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce to the East Providence Special Waterfront Development District Commission.
“We’re very pleased to have Eaton. These are high-wage, manufacturing jobs,” said Boyle. “We worked with them for a couple of years to get them to come to East Providence.”
Other substantial developments in the city are in progress, she said.
Kettle Point, a 400-unit residential development on a former oil distribution site, is in the final phases of getting permits, with construction expected to begin in the spring, she said.
Village on the Waterfront, a 600-unit residential development with 45,000 square feet of retail space, is expected to begin the first phase of construction in late 2014, said Boyle
Not all businesses are sharing in the improved view of development in the city or noticing a positive reflection from the S&P rating.
“I don’t think it’s affected me at all,” said Dean Malatesta, owner of Print-MD, a business he started four years ago that sells toner for printers and does printer repairs and fine-art reproductions.
After owning several other successful businesses, including a music store in Cambridge’s Harvard Square, an apartment building in Haverhill, Mass., and a software company, Malatesta worked in the printing industry until he started Print-MD in 2008. “I haven’t lost customers, they’re just buying less. Companies are cutting their budgets,” he said.
The small company is working to expand its offerings and services because products such as toner for printers meet with stiff competition from large companies.
Competition from multistate companies is also cutting into business at Dial Battery Paint & Auto Supply, which has been in East Providence for more than 30 years.
The company’s major focus has become selling specialty paints and supplies to auto-body shops.
“I’m in and out of the body shops all the time. They get a little work and it dies out,” said Dick Acciardo, co-owner of the business. “It’s been up and down for a long time. Everybody seems to be complaining. They want to know where the recovery is, because it’s not here, it’s not in Rhode Island.
“We had six-and-a-half employees. Our peak year was 2006,” said Acciardo. “Now we’re down to four employees, including the two owners.”
Even though many local businesses continue to struggle with the impact of changes in their own sectors and the slow national and state economic recovery, others such as Phil Tirrell, owner of Weichert Realtors – Tirrell Realty in East Providence, are optimistic.
“I think the upgrade in the S&P bond rating has a very positive impact,” said Tirrell, chairman of the economic-development committee of the East Providence Area Chamber of Commerce.
“The ‘A’ rating brings more confidence to make a decision to locate in East Providence,” said Tirrell.
Tirrell has put his own money where he suggests his clients put it – into East Providence.
“For seven years, I was leasing an office in a shopping center about a mile from where I am now,” said Tirrell. “Then I bought this building on Willett Avenue. It used to be a vacant Bank of America. It was an eyesore. I bought it before Thanksgiving 2012 and did full-speed renovating. I gutted it and did some landscaping. I painted it yellow. I moved in at the end of January.”
His purchase speaks for itself, said Tirrell.
“I have skin in the game,” he said. •

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