Look at Main Street in Woonsocket and what you find are revitalized buildings, neat landscaping, a new museum — but few people.
In spite of what are significant efforts this Main Street program appears to continue to lose business to shopping centers and big box retailers.
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It’s so bad that one Main Street business said that in a week’s time it grossed not even $50 in sales. Another said they might have 10 customers a day, but on the weekends it really gets bad. Another retailer wants to sell, but is finding no takers.
A bleak outlook for a city that has shouldered a bleak reputation for many years.
But there are two Woonsockets. There is the downtown that is struggling in its efforts at revitalization. But there is also the Highland Corporate Park that is attracting companies like CVS (which continues to expand), Unicom and a number of other solid corporate citizens.
Main Street, however, is really a community’s signature piece.
What retailers are suggesting in Woonsocket is that it’s not just the façade that matters, but the infrastructure that supports that façade. Parking, safety, wider streets that allow for easier deliveries (Woonsocket’s Main Street was changed some years ago from one-way back to its original, horse and buggy, two-way), and more activities to draw people to the city’s center.
This is not just a Woonsocket dilemma. It’s repeated in communities across our state, where business development groups struggle with the same issues, with the same empty stores.
For Main Streets to be revitalized local governments, and federal funders, need to pay more attention to infrastructure. Helping communities address problems like parking and safety, and downtown attractions will help turn what in some cases are becoming virtually ghost towns into thriving retail districts.
