The fledgling downtown retail district is starting to see turnover, with two high-profile stores, Lily Pad on Fountain Street and Cathers & Coyne on Westminster Street, now closed. But business and property owners in the area say the district as a whole is still doing well.
“If one [business] turns the lights off, everyone says, ‘Oh my God!’,” said Arnell Milhouse, president of the Downtown Merchants Association and owner of Eyegloo, Spadyssey Day Spa and Solairia Tanning, all downtown.
“You have this dichotomous situation taking place,” he added, “with two that close, but others that are expanding and thriving.”
In fact, many downtown businesses report strong sales.
“It’s excellent,” said Anne Marie Keohane, co-owner of Symposium Books, which opened in 2004. “We’re very pleased with how it’s been doing. Every year we’re seeing an increase.”
Jerry Ehrlich, owner of the wine shop ENO, which opened in April, said his business has “been going swimmingly” and that his sales are “definitely ahead” of his projections.
And Patrick Lavelle, co-owner of Clover, which opened in December, said that he has seen “much more” business than he expected, and it is “steadily increasing.”
“It’s been fantastic; we love it here,” he said. “It really has an exciting amount of energy and forward momentum.”
As for Lily Pad and Cathers & Coyne, they closed for very different reasons.
Mark Beliveau, owner of Lily Pad, a home furnishings store that had opened in October 2005, said his situation involved a problem with the property owner, not a lack of customers.
“I went in and spent $50,000 of my own money renovating that space and bringing it up to code. In return for me putting the money into the space, I got a nice deal on the rent,” said Beliveau. He said he was paying $1,000 per month for his 1,628-square-foot store on Fountain Street, next to the Sportsman’s Inn.
But last fall, the building owners made it clear they wanted to sell the space.
“For me it was horrible,” Beliveau said. “I had already put in that money, and they were parading people through the space. They weren’t shy or quiet about trying to market that space.”
And the prospects of either buying the space for $475,000 or renting it for $3,000 a month were simply not attractive to Beliveau. So at the end of May, he closed his business.
For Cathers & Coyne, a shoe retailer that opened in November 2005 on the corner of Westminster and Eddy streets, the reason for closing, last March, seems to be much simpler.
“We did not experience the level of business that we anticipated when we moved in to the space,” said Jack Cathers, co-owner of the Providence store and of another Cathers & Coyne store at Bowen’s Wharf in Newport, which is still open.
Ari Heckman, director of retail for Cornish Associates, which owns that space, said that although the store simply wasn’t doing as well as the owners had hoped it would, it doesn’t reflect poorly on the chances for other businesses.
“The business they were looking for never really materialized, and I think it just didn’t work out for them compared to the other retailers who have been successful,” said Heckman. “The reason I saw was particular circumstances, really. It was not reflective of the trend of our other retailers, who increase their sales month after month.”
Cathers also added that he still thinks downtown will be a thriving retail area.
“We still believe very strongly in the concept of what they’re trying to create in downtown. The decision was [based on] the timing of how long it would take to reach the goal. We couldn’t continue to operate our business at the level of business that was being conducted,” he said. “But we are committed to being back in the market in the near future.”
Heckman said OOP! will be opening in the space left by Cathers and Coyne in mid-July.
“Immediately after the business left, we found another tenant,” Heckman said. “I think that the way it works with any successful retail [area] is that a lot of businesses are going to work and some are not. But as long as there’s someone to take the spot, you can measure the health.”
