Providence-based Ardente Supply Co. will pay $1.13 million for the former Westerly
headquarters of the defunct Bess Eaton doughnut chain, outbidding software company
Heartlab for the building in bankruptcy court.
The third-generation plumbing and heating business plans to open showrooms in the 30,000-square-foot building on Tom Harvey Road, marking the first expansion of the family-owned business in more than 40 years.
The company’s bid last month in U.S. Bankruptcy Court was $130,000 more than officially offered by Westerly’s Heartlab, a growing software company that supplies digital images and information networks for cardiology departments.
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Michael Ardente, co-owner and treasurer of the Ardente family corporation, said the company is continuing to meet with architects to determine the best way to make Bess Eaton’s former office space its own. While the building is the size the company was looking for, the amount of room devoted to office space is much more than is needed to set up the retail showrooms the company has wanted to offer for the past several years to South County’s growing population.
“We need storage,” said Ardente of the building, which will offer both retail and wholesale distribution. “And that means we may end up subdividing the space and leasing out some office space, or reconstructing the interior. But it’s such nice office space, it’d be a sin to demolish it all.”
The Bess Eaton headquarters was up for grabs after Canada-based Tim Hortons, a subsidiary of Dublin, Ohio-based Wendy’s International Inc., acquired the doughnut chain this spring. Two months after acquiring Bess Eaton’s 42 stores in New England, Tim Hortons has already finished bringing all the locations under its banner.
Besides a Providence branch, Ardente Supply already has an operation in Woonsocket and Ardente said the hope is that the “pretty elaborate” plumbing and heating showrooms planned for Westerly can open by October.
“We’ve been in business since 1946 and we’re looking to really getting to serve all of Rhode Island now that we’ll have a presence down in the southern part of the state,” Ardente said. The company will eventually be taking on up to another dozen employees, most in sales, to staff the new location.
Meanwhile, instead of moving some of its operations a few hundred feet down the road, Heartlab will return to its original plan, building a 16,000-square-foot addition onto its existing facility on Crosswind Road. Lisa Nelson, marketing manager at Heartlab, said the company plans to break ground by September for what will probably be a six-month construction project.
The company built Heartlab’s current 18,000-square-foot building three years ago, when the company had well under 50 employees. Today, more than 100 of the company’s 140 employees work out of the Westerly office (the remainder work in California as part of the recently acquired telecardiology company CardioNow or across the country as salespeople based out of their homes).
Robert Petrocelli, CEO and co-founder of the company, said the need for more space is a nice problem to face. Heartlab, which has been named to Inc. magazine’s list of the fastest-growing private companies for the past four years, was formed in 1994. Petrocelli said the company started in a “very small” Providence rental space, before moving to a larger rental space in Westerly.
“Quite frankly, we’re stuffed to the rafters with people here,” Petrocelli said. “But of course it’s nice to be able to expand, rather than contract. We had been exploring the Bess Eaton building when it seemed like a good deal, but it ended up not being a cost-effective solution.”
In bankruptcy court, Heartlab was willing to match the $1.13 million offer, but not go above that figure, and so lost the facility. Ardente offered the $1.13 million bid first.
Heartlab’s existing building holds labs for software development and a production facility where networked systems are built and tested for the company’s 250 installations. Heartlab’s corporate, customer service and marketing staff are also based in the building. The addition will allow for an expanded high-tech demo training room and an improved area for the engineering group.
“Westerly is the home base for Heartlab,” Petrocelli said. “And we certainly
hope it will continue on the growth trajectory it’s been on for the past four
years.”
