Businesses breathe new life into Providence’s ‘downcity’

(Corrected, Sept. 21, 11 a.m.)
When she opened the Queen of Hearts boutique on Union Street in Providence four years ago, the profit Karen Beebe made in her first year of business was a grand total of $7.
So she works at least two other jobs – as a bartender and sewing instructor – to support herself and her business. But within the next few weeks, she’ll have to cut back on those secondary jobs because she’s opening a new store, Modern Love Shoes at 220 Westminster St., selling women’s shoes and accessories. The new shop will be next door to Queen of Hearts, which moved in March to 222 Westminster St., around the corner from its former site.
For the first time Beebe will hire employees – rather than rely on student interns. And for the first time, to help with the move, she obtained financial assistance in the form of a microloan from the city.
Beebe is one of the more successful entrepreneurs who have set up shops along Westminster Street, a trendy shopping district dubbed “downcity” that is frequented mostly by college students and workers from nearby offices. It is a place where stores come and go on a near-regular basis, so clearly there are challenges to running a successful business there. On top of that, the dismal state of the economy brings added risk to Beebe’s expansion venture, but she is not worried.
The key, Beebe said, is to understand what your customers need.
“You need to know what your customers can afford,” she said. She is not surprised that some shops on Westminster have gone out of business. The goods that some tried to sell, while beautiful to look at, were overpriced well beyond the modest incomes of most students and office workers, she suggested.
“You can’t just open up a bunch of high-end stores and think you’re going to make it,” Beebe said. At Queen of Hearts, jewelry prices range from $5 to $150. “If you make your prices more accessible to customers, they’ll come back,” she said.
Beebe’s new store is one of four new enterprises coming to the area, according to Joanna Levitt, director of commercial leasing for Cornish Associates, which owns eight commercial buildings in the immediate vicinity of Westminster Street.
Other new enterprises are: Sura Restaurant at 232 Westminster St., a Korean restaurant complete with sushi bar that owner/operator Hae Sook Kim intends to open before the end of the year; The Salon, a tavern at 57 Eddy St. that should open in mid-October, owned by a New York City resident and Brown University graduate whom Levitt declined to name; and ZOP handmade soaps on Westminster that owner/operator Richard Roden plans to open in mid-October. Levitt refused to reveal the rental rates that Cornish charges. She suggested that what matters most is the way the Westminster area can attract a reliable clientele made up of downtown residents, office workers and students from nearby colleges and universities. “There’s a lot of young people coming downtown because this is something of an arts and cultural center for the city,” she said.
However, rent surely plays a role because the Westminster area, in general, has some of the lowest average rental and vacancy rates in the city, according to a commercial vacancy study done by CB Richard Ellis-New England this summer.
At 9.3 percent, Westminster had the lowest vacancy rate of the eight districts included in the report and the second-lowest average asking lease rate of $18.80 per square foot (the former Jewelry District was lowest at $18.37). This rate compares to averages of $31.35 for the Capital Center, $23.42 for the financial district and $23.53 for the Empire Street area.
It isn’t the rental rates, however, but a certain “mystique” that is causing Roden to relocate the retail end of his soap-making business, ZOP, to downtown Providence. He will continue to manufacture more than 30 varieties of soaps, shampoos and body lotions in his studio in Woodstock, Conn., near the state border.
Roden, who grew up in Providence, said he was impressed when he recently visited the area after an absence of several years to see such “vitality” downtown in terms of the number of people walking around and the number of businesses in operation. “There’s a nice, positive vibe going on and there’s something kind of funky, groovy and special about it. There’s a mystique to Providence, and a lot of people are starting to realize that.”
Daniel Baudouin, executive director of The Providence Foundation, suggested that in the last 10 years public and private sector efforts have transformed the Westminster Street area into “a walkable, urban environment that people really enjoy,” with residences, eateries, a hotel and various shops located in restored historic buildings. Westminster Street is in the middle of the Downtown Improvement District that is co-managed by the foundation. Baudouin reeled off a list of improvements coming to downtown, such as $1.2 million in sidewalk repairs along Weybosset, Washington and Westminster streets during the next year; returning parts of Empire and Weybosset streets to two-way traffic, to be phased in starting in the next year; a major renovation of the entrance to the Providence Performing Arts Center on Weybosset; property owner TD Bank’s renovation of 11,000 square feet of commercial space at Dorrance and Westminster streets; and conversion of the former Saki’s Pizza building on Weybosset into a Greek restaurant.
Causalities of the economic recession in the downtown commercial landscape were two recognizable businesses, the gift shop Oop! and the Federal Reserve banquet hall, which owner Bob Burke said he closed temporarily while he searches for a new location. The Federal Reserve building on Dorrance Street recently changed hands and the new owners have plans that do not include the banquet hall, said Burke, owner and operator of Pot au Feu restaurant on Custom House Street downtown.
Beebe, a New Bedford native who’s lived in Providence for 12 years, has no plans to leave Westminster.
“I would never go to a mall,” she said. “I am here trying to get people to think outside-the-box and not to go to malls.”
Beebe said she is staying put because she feels an obligation to the 46 artists, most of them local, who contribute handmade products to Queen of Hearts and she harbors high hopes for downtown’s future. “I am so excited,” she said of the activity taking place in the shopping district. “I finally feel as if Westminster Street is taking a turn for the better.” •