Ada Terrero started out selling baked goods out of her house – pies, cakes
and other Dominican specialties. As her business grew, she moved into a small
store, then a bigger one. Now, 15 years later, she owns a large building on
Broad Street.
Along with Ada’s Creations, a takeout cafe and bakery, she has El Macuto next door, considered the most elegant restaurant on the South Side and a popular nightspot. On the second floor, she plans to open a banquet hall. Her staff will double to 20.
“This is the type of business that has a lot of potential,” Miguel Luna, the local city councilman, told Lt. Gov. Charles Fogarty as they visited Ada’s last Monday. “For us it is a blessing to have a business like this, where we can bring our family for a nice meal.”
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The restaurant was the final stop in a two-hour walk down Broad Street hosted by the Southside Merchants Association. Fogarty, who chairs the state Small Business Advocacy Council, was the main guest, but the group also included Stephen D. Umberger, the Small Business Administration’s acting district director; two legislators; and some key players in the local Hispanic business scene.
In the winter, the merchants group had taken Fogarty through the upper section of Broad Street. This time, they started at 807 Broad St. and walked several blocks south, past Global Travel, Stanly’s Auto Repair, a money-sending business, a brand-new CVS. Several times, they stopped to talk with the owners and staff of local stores and eateries.
The goal, said Jose Brito, head of the merchants group, was to show Fogarty “the successes within the limits of what we’re doing here,” and to give him a sense of the businesses’ need for financing, expertise and hands-on skills.
“Maybe it’s because of our lack of education,” Brito said, “but we’re not getting the resources that we need.”
As they walked, some group members handed out fliers and pamphlets about just such resources. Frances deSousa, an SBA economic development specialist, invited merchants to enroll in SBA training programs. Adriana Dawson, of the Rhode Island Small Business Development Center at Bryant University, promoted the second annual Latino Business Expo, this Friday at Rhodes on the Pawtuxet.
The group’s first stop was at Compare Foods, a good-sized store full of the scents of tropical fruit, with tall stacks of tortilla flour and Malta India, a popular soft drink, near the registers.
“This is the only supermarket here in the neighborhood, other than the small markets,” state Sen. Juan M. Pichardo (D-Dist. 2) explained.
The nearest full-sized supermarket, said Rep. Joseph S. Almeida (D-Dist. 12), is Shaw’s on Warwick Avenue. But on Broad Street, Compare counts as a major employer.
Pointing to the Malta India, Pichardo offered a slice of South Side life: “In the early years, a lot of people thought this was a beer, especially law enforcement,” he said. Police would go to arrest Latinos for drinking in public, only to discover the drink was a kind of non-alcoholic beer, often mixed with condensed milk.
“I’ve been drinking this since I was 2 or 3 years old,” said Luna.
Fogarty also learned about yucca, a tuber shaped like a large yam, but with a thick brown skin, that is a staple in Latin America. And his hosts pointed out the stacks of Goya products: rice, beans, seasonings, vegetables, juices. Mainstream supermarkets carry all those products, they said, but local folks tend to shop in the neighborhood.
Back outside, Almeida urged Fogarty to try to save South Providence’s enterprise zone tax credits. “That’s one of our biggest issues,” he said. “You’ve got well over 200 people employed on Broad Street. We need our tax breaks.”
Almeida pointed across the street, to the popular Carolina’s Restaurant. “Why not give her the same tax break, on a percentage basis, as someone on Quonset Point?” he asked. As it is, he added, Providence businesses face a bigger tax burden because of the city’s high property tax rates.
Speaking directly with the merchants – or through Juana I. Horton, a professional interpreter and chair of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce – Fogarty learned firsthand how hard most Broad Street business owners work.
Jhonny “Bomba” Rodriguez, owner of El Palacio de la Musica, a small-sized music store bursting with bachata, merengue and Latin pop CDs, said he bought the business five years ago, and he works there every day, by himself, 9 to 9.
Vicente and Maritza Giglifiore, who own the Joyeria Italia jewelry store, work the counters themselves, aided by their two sons. Asked how they were doing, Mrs. Giglifiore shrugged and replied, “Well, as a small business, we hope to hang in there.”
Dawson, who has provided training to many local merchants, described the hierarchy of Broad Street business: New arrivals open tiny eateries, money-sending stores and international calling centers. The oldest businesses are beauty salons and bodegas.
Most Broad Street businesses, Pichardo said, are financed with the owners’ savings or through sociedades, groups of immigrants who pool their money together to provide a cash infusion to their businesses as needed. It works well enough, Pichardo and Luna said, but to really thrive, merchants need conventional financing.
“For somebody with vision, there’s so much potential here,” Luna said.
It seemed fitting, then, to end with Ada’s Creations. Terrero, who has become a U.S. citizen, is in a different league now – an owner, not a renter, with capital provided by an SBA-backed loan from Bank Rhode Island. Fogarty got the message.
“Look at how Broad Street has changed for the better in the last 10 years,” he said. “There are a lot of good things happening, and what we want is to make our state as fertile as possible for people to start a business, take that risk and succeed. Our economic development has tended to focus on what I call megaprojects, but we are still a small business-driven economy.”
One good sign, Fogarty said, is banks’ changing attitudes. Last year, Sovereign
Bank signed on to sponsor the Latino Business Expo. This year, when Bank of
America was asked, “it was hardly a sell at all. It was, ‘Yes, we want to be
there.’”
