The newest addition to the Westminster Street retail district development will
be Design Within Reach, real estate developer Cornish Associates announced Oct.
20.
The modern furniture store joins other new businesses along Westminster Street including tazza caffé and Symposium Books in the Alice Building, and Urban Kitchen, which opened across the street at 217 Westminster St. on Oct. 1.
Design Within Reach signed a lease agreement to occupy studio space in the historic Wilkinson Building at 210 Westminster St. at the corner of Eddy Street where a Lerner New York store last stood.
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The 3,190-square-foot studio space with 130 feet of glass storefront will undergo $250,000 to $325,000 in renovations over the next few months. It is expected to open by mid-January.
Design Within Reach is a San Francisco-based furniture company with studios in and around Boston, New York City, Chicago and other metropolitan areas. It also sells items through catalogue and on the Internet.
It specializes in modern design furniture, lighting, floor coverings and home and office fixtures and accessories. Featured designers include Mies van der Rohe and Alvar Aalto, as well as young modern designers including Phillipe Starck, Jorge Pensi and Enrico Franzolini.
“We put our studios in urban settings in spaces that have historical architecture,” said Kristine Langevin, area manager for Design Within Reach. “Touring the street and seeing the renovations, you can feel the revitalization in this area. We are excited to be here.”
Cornish Associates, a specialized real estate development company, is converting six buildings along Westminster Street into live/work space, retail shops, restaurants and offices – the Westminster Street Lofts – as part of a revitalization plan for the Downcity Providence area where abandoned buildings stood as reminders of a busy city decades ago.
“This was once the best place to shop in the city until department stores left for the mall in the 1970s,” said Arnold B. Chace Jr., CEO of Cornish Associates.
“What drove us to renovation was the upper part of these buildings, because we knew people wanted to live in this area. Our new vision includes an eclectic mix of retailers on the ground levels.”
Chace said Design Within Reach typifies the ambiance of the new Westminster Street Lofts project.
The project consists of six buildings and already has more than 100 units of completed lofts with retail and services on the ground floors.
In 2005, the Peerless Building, at 229 Westminster St. at the corner of Union Street, will have 97 more units on line and the Grant’s Block Development will add more than 400 parking spaces and liner buildings with retail on the ground floor and residential units above.
The Burgess and O’Gorman buildings were combined as one new building with 13 loft-style apartments and retail spaces on the ground floor at 220-232 Westminster St.
The Smith Building is an historic building located directly behind City Hall in Downcity. Cornish, joint venturing with Keen Development Corp. of Cambridge, Mass., rehabilitated the building and converted it in to 36 loft-style apartments and two first-floor retail spaces, occupied by Lumiere and G-Media.
The Alice Building, located at 236 Westminster St., is a seven-story classical revival structure with 38 loft-style residential units above a first-floor bookstore, café and art gallery.
