PROVIDENCE – Having heard rumors that riots and looting were planned for the Providence Place mall, Guido Silvestri stopped by his Westminster Street skateboard shop on Monday night.
The owner of Civil, which also has locations in East Greenwich and Westerly, took some cash from the register and retrieved his personal skateboard deck collection that lined the wall. Then he went home, and crossed his fingers.
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Fast forward to shortly before 2 a.m., and Silvestri got the call from his security company, reporting the glass storefront windows were smashed in. For the next several hours, he sat up, awake and anxious, as a friend who lived downtown texted him updates of crowds vandalizing the store and stealing clothes, boards and sneakers.
“It was gut-wrenching,” said Silvestri of his long, sleepless night. “Your stomach is doing backflips all night.”
Unlike a peaceful demonstration over the weekend, violent overnight protests left stores across downtown and in the Providence Place mall ransacked. Roughly 65 people were arrested, as city and state police worked overnight to quell the riots, Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza said on Tuesday.
Gov. Gina M. Raimondo on Tuesday condemned the rioting, calling it “an attack on the people of Rhode Island” and not a protest.
“They came here deliberately to cause harm, hurt people and destroy our property,” she said. Seventy individuals were arrested as a result, the majority of them are Rhode Islanders – and about half from Providence.
“[They were] going after small businesses at a time when many of them are just barely getting back on their feet,” Raimondo said. “What they did was wrong. I’m ashamed and angry. But most of all, I’m determined to hold them accountable.”
After receiving the go-ahead from law enforcement, Silvestri raced from his Saunderstown home to downtown. It was 7 a.m,, light and eerily quiet, when he arrived at his store and caught his first glimpses of the destruction.
The windows were broken, the TV and front desk computer smashed, stray clothing and single sneakers strewn across the floor.
Silvestri estimated the losses at upwards of $10,000, though he was hesitant to give a more specific number.
“At this point, it’s still tough to wrap my head around, he said. “I kind of don’t even know where to start.”
His voice faltered as he looked around the store, the floors cleaned, a plywood board covering the broken window and the roar of a vacuum as an employee removed the last shards of glass by mid-morning Tuesday.
He had weathered a pandemic, and was beginning to resume business as usual, having reopened the store under state guidelines in mid-May. Even during the shutdown, Silvestri worked hard to keep things running, securing a federal loan through the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program to keep his employees on staff, transitioning all merchandise to the store’s online shop and offering deals like free in-state shipping to incentivize customers.
“It was working,” he said. “We were doing OK.”
Cafe Nuovo had not fared as well. The downtown restaurant overlooking the Providence river had shuttered during stay-at-home orders, not even offering takeout or delivery, said Sean Scannell, general manager.
He was banking on the success of indoor dining, having just resumed on Monday after opening the outdoor seating area a few weeks prior.
When he came back at 7 a.m. Tuesday, the tables were turned over, alcohol bottles strewn across the floor and most of the outdoor dining furniture dumped in the river.
“It’s hard to see this happening in our own backyard, not just something you read about on the internet,” Scannell said.
On Tuesday morning, wait staff in white shirts and black pants joined with volunteers in cleaning the wreck, bringing remaining patio furniture inside as the restaurant prepared to close once again.
For how long, Scannell was unsure.
“We don’t feel like it’s safe to open right now,” he said, noting that more protests have been planned for the week.
And the consequences for downtown Providence businesses could last even longer, said Joseph Paolino Jr., owner of Paolino Properties, which owns several downtown buildings. While the damage to his properties was repairable – mostly smashed windows – Paolino worried about his small-business tenants already suffering from the blow of the pandemic and desperately trying to resume some semblance of normalcy.
“Every time you take a step forward, you take two steps back,” he said.
The violent images of a police car burning in downtown Providence were hard to erase from his mind, and he worried what potential customers would think.
“It doesn’t make Providence an inviting place to visit,” he said.
ENO Fine Wines on Westminster Street, meanwhile, opened at its regular 11 a.m. Tuesday despite the damage. The smashed glass window had been covered with plywood, and workers and volunteers continued to sweep up shattered glass and spilled alcohol.
As he knelt outside the liquor store, vacuuming up shards of glass from between the cobblestones of the sidewalk, store clerk Domenic Merolla said the store fared better than some in terms of the extent of the damage. And as an “essential business” able to remain open during the pandemic, sales had not plummeted the way they had at neighboring shops. Still, he worried about additional damage from future rioting.
“All we can do is be more prepared,” he said.
Silvestri was reluctant to begin repairing and restocking his shell of a store because of fear over more riots.
“I want to go slow,” he said. “I don’t want to invest all of that only to have it be destroyed again.”
(ADDS paragraphs 6-8 with comment from Raimondo.)
Nancy Lavin is PBN staff writer. You may reach her at Lavin@PBN.com. PBN special projects editor James Bessette contributed to this report.
Yeah, my friend (who happens to be black) had two of his Metro stores looted last night. You are not honoring victims by creating more yourself.
This was NOT a “protest”. It was a planned criminal attack by an ANTIFA infused crowd of thugs.
What is required is a full curfew, complete arrest of all violators, prosecution, conviction, and jail time.