Chapel View, a mixed-use project being built on the site of the former Rhode Island Training School for Youth, is filling up quickly, developer Carpionato Properties Inc. says, with tenants expected to move into the old dormitory buildings by late spring, and several retailers already signed on.
“The project is coming along nicely,” said Mark Briggs, director of leasing, in an interview last week. “There are two buildings yet to be built, but they will be undertaken this summer and fall.” The entire complex should be finished by mid-2007, he said.
The 30-acre development, which is nestled between Sockanosset Cross Road and Routes 2 and 37, and across from Garden City Center, will include seven buildings with a total of 240,000 square feet of retail, 80,000 square feet of office space, and about 60 condominiums.
The first major tenant, a Shaw’s supermarket, moved in last June, Briggs said. Additional commercial tenants will include Ted’s Montana Grille – a new chain owned by Ted Turner – along with Johnny Rockets, The Bombay Company, Pendleton Wool and Zuzu’s Petals, he said.
“Leasing is starting to pick up significantly now that construction has begun,” Briggs said. “This is going to be a desired point of interest.”
Billed as a “lifestyle and mixed-use development,” Chapel View will mix new construction with restored historic buildings, including some of the Victorian-style dormitories of the Training School, which opened in 1898, and the reformatory’s chapel, for which the project is named.
When completed, the turn-of-the-century stone chapel will become a restaurant. The three dormitories and two new buildings will house retail, office and residential units.
“We’re very excited about the project,” said Hannah Hodgson, president of the Cranston Chamber of Commerce. “The location is perfect, and we think it will create some competition and raise the bar for other businesses in the area. It’s going to be quite a place.”
Cranston City Planner Jared Rhodes called the project “a wonderful example of how historic preservation and development can work together,” adding that it “is allowing us to preserve a good portion of Cranston’s past.”
Mayor Stephen P. Laffey said that while many view the mixed-use concept “as something new,” in reality it “takes us back to the more community-based concept that helped Cranston develop” as a city with “charming, distinct neighborhoods where businesses, retail shops, and residences coexisted.”
Chapel View’s mixed-use character and its focus on commercial space and condominiums should also help the project do well even if there’s a downturn in the residential real estate market, both Briggs and Rhodes said.
“We have over the course of the year seen a slowdown of single-family homes being built,” Rhodes said. “But I think its uniqueness really puts it in a different category than the traditional single-family home; these are high-end condominiums.”
Michael McMahon, executive director of the R.I. Economic Development Corporation, said he thinks that this type of village development, where people can live, work and play in the same general area, will prove a popular alternative to single-family housing as the cost of commuting continues to rise.
“This is one of the first,” McMahon said. “But I think, hopefully, we will see a lot more.”
