When Providence’s Capital Center Commission approved design plans for what a Providence developer called “Rhode Island’s first food hall” at the Union Station building, it raised two questions: what’s a food hall and would this really be the state’s first? After all, Plant City Providence LLC on South Water Street bills itself as Rhode Island’s
Already a Subscriber? Log in
To Continue Reading This Article
Become a Providence Business News subscriber and get immediate access to all of our premier content and much more.Learn More and Become a Subscriber
- Critical RI business news and analysis updated daily.
- 1 year of print (26 issues).
- Unlimited access to all subscriber only content on our website, on any device.
- Free email alerts.
- Annual Book of Lists Print Edition.
- All special issues produced during subscription term.
Click Here to purchase a paywall bypass link for this article
PBN Branded Content
Your Business Has Gone Global. Has Your Insurance?
A decade ago, “doing business internationally” was mostly a large-company concern. Today, a manufacturer in…
Learn More
Rather a trite and silly article spending time debating the definition of a food hall rather than focusing on why Rhode Island does not have one. In fact, wasn’t it the Carpionato group that planned to build a food hall in the area where they demolished the old fruit and produce market just west of Providence Place. So why didn’t Larocque investigate the reasons behind the no action on that development. A food hall would seem to require diversity and scale to be successful which makes the Marsella planned $23.5 million investment an attention grabber. Plant City is a nice operation, but it is nothing more than a glorified restaurant, subdivided and they certainly didn’t spend millions getting it into operation. In fact Venda on Federal Hill has a better claim as food hall than Plant City since it offers a variety of food products, prepared foods, ceramics besides serving as a restaurant. In fact, expand Venda tenfold and you have Eataly in NYC and Boston. If Providence wants to be a culinary destination, it has to offer a food hall on the scale and diversity of Pike’s Place in Seattle.
This would be a great idea if Providence was bustling as it was in the ’70s and ’80s, but I fear it is too little, too late.