(Tom Croke)
While city officials and even some real estate developers see Woonsocket’s Main Street as up-and-coming, for small businesses, it is far from a street of dreams.
The foundation for Main Street Woonsocket — one of the districts identified by Main Street Rhode Island as one of the state’s 40 historic commercial areas — seems to be in place: landscaped corners, buildings painstakingly restored and anchor attractions like Chan’s Fine Oriental Dining, the Museum of Work and Culture and the Stadium Theatre.
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But a second look reveals little else. Empty buildings line the strip, which is largely occupied by small stores with irregular hours. And few people walk the street – virtually a ghost town even in the middle of a business day.
“You want to know how we survive? We wait for the first and the sixteenth,” said Pat Almstrom, manager of gift store Earth Angels. “You want to know why? Welfare checks and old age. We’re fighting a losing battle.”
Almstrom said her store had not even sold $50 in merchandise in the previous week, even though all items were reduced as much as 50 percent for Earth Angels’ going-out-of-business sale.
“There are days we could play baseball out in that street and not see a car,” she said. “It’s not that the merchandise isn’t fair – it is – the prices are reasonable. It’s not that we haven’t tried – sidewalk sales – everything. There’s nothing here. Nothing. It’s unfortunate.”
Almstrom said the street, once a home to four movie theaters, has not always been this way.
“There wasn’t one empty store on the street – there were all kinds of stores, but big business killed the little people,” she said. “Do you think I would come to Main Street when I can go to the mall and find everything right there? The mayor is saying ‘Oh yeah, city on the move.’ Yeah, city on the move – out. They’re going out, not coming in.”
Efforts to reach Woonsocket Mayor Susan D. Menard were unsuccessful.
Amin Malik, who has owned and operated Main Street’s Liberty Market convenience store for 19 years, doesn’t seem convinced that the basic principles which guide business exist on Main Street.
“For business, people have to exchange money for goods,” he said. “If people can’t park, they can’t shop.”
The street’s inadequate width for delivery trucks – the result of making Main Street two-way in the 1990s – is another complication.
“Those who planned the renovation, they didn’t take into consideration the number of deliveries a convenience store needs in one day,” he said.
Malik said he manages to survive on Main Street, although he has always had to work additional jobs to keep the store open – and support his family.
“We used to have a bus stop over here, and that was my best bet,” he said. “After the bus stop moved, my business went down. It’s a very marginal store. I can’t hire somebody to work for me. I don’t make minimum wage, even.”
Adams TV Rental is also affected by delivery difficulties – Store Manager David Phillips has carried furniture from parking lots blocks away to the store when delivery trucks have been unable to stop in the narrow two-way street.
The store has been located on Main Street for 14 years. Phillips said the activity level of the street changed “when they moved the welfare office and the bus stop. It helped to have the bus stop in front of the store.”
On average, Phillips said 10 people come into the store each day, most to make rental payments on furniture or electronics.
One of the newest tenants on the strip is Big Ed’s, an antiques and second-hand store, open since January. Shop manager Rose Lescarbeau called Main Street “very slow. There’s really not very much on Main Street. When people come to Main Street it’s because they have a day in court or a day at the registry.”
Louis Lopez, owner of Salon Bellissima, said big box retailers have taken their toll on the street.
“It’s hard doing business here because downtown isn’t as much of an attraction now with all the big stores like Wal-Mart,” he said. “There’s no more room for the small business man.”
Lopez described business as fair, challenged by the softened economy and lack of adequate parking downtown, but he is optimistic.
“It will get a lot better,” he said. “I consider myself one of the lucky ones. I’ve seen people spend all the savings they have to go into business and close in six months.”
Kirsten Means, executive director of Main Street Rhode Island, said the City of Woonsocket hasn’t utilized state resources available to Main Street communities in six to eight months.
Sandy Schacht, owner of Schacht Associates, a corporate real estate brokerage firm located in Providence, is advertising a building at 65 Main Street.
Schacht said there has been some interest in the building’s loft space, but that he has not had a single inquiry about the retail space during the two months he has represented the property’s owner.
“We’ve been waiting a long time for Woonsocket to explode,” he said. “With some of the restoration, you would thinkThere’s always this feeling of ‘It’s got to be now.’ I still feel like it’s going to happen, I’m just getting tired of ‘When?'”
But there is a different set of opinions.
“I’m making it happen right now,” said Vin Coccoli, president of Property Marketing and Development in North Providence.
Coccoli said he has invested more than $2 million in Woonsocket real estate, including between 85,000 and 90,000 square feet on Main Street. While his retail spaces on Main Street show vacancies, his apartments – many on the upper levels of the downtown buildings – are full, he said.
“I’m bullish on the city,” he said. “I believe Woonsocket is a good investment and a good value.”
Calling himself an “eternal optimist,” the City of Woonsocket’s new Director of Economic Development Tom Nichols preferred to focus on the positive things that are happening on the strip: the National Preservation Conference that will pay a visit to Woonsocket in October; the grand re-opening of the Stadium Theatre, featuring headliner Branford Marsalis; the newest India Restaurant, to be located near the Museum of Work and Culture.
Nichols, admitted, though, that there are issues the city must overcome such as parking and the expense of renovations to the old retail building stock that lines the street.
“It’s going to be a number of things coming together,” he said. “It’s a matter of bringing in the types of businesses that will draw people who will walk by others (businesses) and be interested and stop in. Society has to be more accepting of walking and looking at businesses that are just getting going. You never know who’s going to be the next CVS.”
The Museum of Work and Culture, which will be opened for four years this October, tells the story of the French Canadians who immigrated to Woonsocket to work in the city’s mills during the Industrial Revolution.
“If you look at our guest book, we have people from Texas, New Jersey, Montreal, California,” said the museum’s site director, Anne Conway. “Ten years ago, nobody would have thought that Woonsocket would be a tourist destination, but now it is.”
But despite its attractiveness, “the new lights, the painted stores,” Liberty Market’s Malik seemed doubtful about Main Street’s future possibilities as a business district. Over the years he has considered selling the store, but has been unable to find a buyer.
“The future is not bright for Main Street, to be frank,” he said. “I don’t regret. I raised four kids, gave them a good education, worked seven days a week… They are professionals and are doing very well and I am glad. You can’t win everything – you lose some, you gain some.”
