Grocery store returning to Smith Hill

The Valueland Supermarket parcel – a Smith Hill eyesore that’s been vacant almost 10 years – is due for a major facelift, but at least one neighbor is skeptical whether an incoming supermarket will clean up the distressed neighborhood.
Last week, city leaders and Marshall Properties Inc. announced plans to redevelop the Smith Street property into an ALDI Supermarket, set to open by January 2009.
“Since the 1960s, when the first supermarket opened here, this site has been a local hub,” said City Council Majority Leader Terrance M. Hassett at a press conference in front of the boarded-up building.
And while a supermarket is what Hassett always has wanted for the embattled property, it looked like the lot was going to end up housing a different use just a few years ago.
In 2002, Providence College purchased the 0.76-acre lot with the intention of creating an off-campus soccer field to be shared with local youth teams – but Hassett and other officials said that the property was to be developed only as a commercial property.
A central market was needed, the city told PC at the time.
PC Vice President Ed Caron said last week that the college was eventually able to “identify on our own campus a way to satisfy our own needs with a turf field.”
PC announced in 2006 that it would sell the parcel – now valued at about $1.06 million by the city assessor’s office. PC paid $1.25 million in 2002. Marshall Properties stepped in earlier this year to buy the property, develop it and lease it to ALDI Inc. Neither Providence College officials nor Marshall Properties Inc. would release details of the sale – which was set to close on Nov. 29 – prior to press time last week.
But in a neighborhood that has been steadily transitioning into rundown houses with absentee landlords and college student tenants, there isn’t much hope for a supermarket, said David Sorafine, who has owned Downtown Radiator for 30 years across Smith Street.
The supermarket is a sign of progress, he said, but only so if it sticks around, which he’s not optimistic about.
“I just can’t see a supermarket lasting,” he said. “When Valueland was there, half the people who were in there were eating the stuff off the shelves, stealing it instead of buying it.”
He cited the recent closing of Shaw’s Supermarket in the Eagle Square Plaza, which had higher-end neighbors – like Staples, Subway and Dunkin’ Donuts – to draw in customers. Smith Street, though, doesn’t have the same offerings, he said. “I’d have more faith in a supermarket if that one flew in Eagle Square.”
The Germany-based ALDI Supermarkets was founded in 1946 as Albrecht Discount and entered the U.S. market in 1976. Since, it has grown to be the nation’s 24th largest grocery chain, with 850 U.S. locations. Internationally, it has a presence in 18 countries, with 7,500 total stores.
Bruce Persohn, ALDI division vice president, said the store operates like a non-membership discount supermarket, which will fit well into the Smith Street neighborhood.
“It’s going to be the neighborhood grocery store,” he said, “that will hopefully be the choice of the local shoppers.”
Lianne Marshall, principal of Marshall Properties Inc., based in Pawtucket, said the parcel likely will become a retail plaza with the blessing of city planners. Initial renderings show two outbuildings, one of which might eventually be a bank, and parking lot access from Ruggles, Dickens and Smith streets.
Sorafine, who watched the press conference last week from across Smith Street, is worried about what would happen if the ALDI closed. While Providence College owned the property, daily patrols didn’t keep the graffiti artists away. At times, spray painters wandered across the street to Sorafine’s property.
Sorafine said an international corporation like ALDI, if it were to close, would likely not be offering post-closing security on the site.
“Do you think all those people are going to be standing out there if this one closes after two years?” Sorafine asked, watching, through a window, city and ALDI officials drive away from the press conference. •