WAL-MART is under construction at the RI Mall.
Land on Warwick’s Route 2 is getting very expensive – upwards of $1 million an acre, according to local developers. In fact, the stretch of road which runs between Routes 113 and 117 is known to some developers and real estate agents as the “Golden Mile.”
John Haddad, president of Haddad Associates in East Greenwich said prices of $1 million per acre are not uncommon.
According to the Warwick tax assessor’s office, the real estate value of Home Depot’s Route 2 location is $8,532,900; the Target site is assessed at $9,229,600.
“It all depends on how much frontage you have,” Haddad said. “If you’re on a corner and have a significant amount of frontage, you pay the higher price. The rents justify the numbers I’m talking about.”
A typical rent, Haddad said, for Route 2’s big box retailers – those with floor space in excess of 30,000 square feet – is $16 to $18.50 per square foot.
Haddad compared Route 2 with North Attleboro’s retail district along Route 1 in Massachusetts, in terms of rents. He said Warwick, with its denser population, is more attractive to retailers shopping for a location.
As for the land’s pricetag, Haddad said, “for the common person, they think it’s astronomical. But there isn’t very much land available. They’re not making [manufacturing] it [available land].”
The limited space for additional development means one thing, according to Haddad: “Redevelopment. Older centers being completely redone. That’s where is goes. There’s no choice left for frontage.”
According to William R. Facente, director of Economic Development for the City of Warwick, the four-mile segment of Route 2 that runs through Warwick is the longest concentration of retail stores in the Ocean State.
You can find just about anything along Route 2 in Warwick, from a series of furniture stores, car dealerships, big retailers like Kmart and Target, restaurants, coffee shops, office supply stores, electronics, clothing, recording, grocery stores, and much more. And that’s just what’s there. What’s coming is more of the same with some new twists.
The facade of HomeLife, is going up behind Hops Restaurant, adjacent to the now closed Warwick Musical Theater. The theater will be replaced by Lowe’s. Jake Kaplan Jaguar and Landrover will soon be a neighbor to Home Depot, as will another auto dealer. Linens & Things, Panera Bakery and perhaps a relocated Barnes & Noble are anticipated for shopping plazas nearby, according to Facente.
The trend for these new shopping centers will lean toward the “campus style” – clusters of freestanding structures – in lieu of the traditional strip malls.
“I think back when strip malls first started, they served their purpose,” Facente said. “Now the days of a concrete box broken into 20 units with asphalt and no roads are over.”
New stores will also be making their way into the traditional malls, with the additions of the Longhorn Steakhouse, Macaroni Grille and National Amusements Cinemas at the Warwick Mall, and Wal-Mart as the new anchor at Rhode Island Mall.
Haxton’s Liquors, a Route 2 fixture since the early 1960s, expanded into its present site in 1971. It is a 24,000 square foot building that, according to co-owner Bob Haxton, was one of the first buildings of that size on Route 2, which was then lush with trees. The road’s growth spurt in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Rhode Island Mall and Warwick Mall were built in 1968 and 1970, respectively) stimulated retail growth of almost every kind, and along with it, an unpleasant side effect: traffic.
“People are aggravated with traffic,” Haxton said. “We hear people complaining all the time.”
According to the 1999 state Department of Transportation Traffic Flow Map, Route 2 is traveled by approximately 32,000 cars each day.
“Nobody likes sitting in traffic, especially on weekends,” said Alyson Paolino, manager at Dots, a women’s and girl’s discount apparel store. “The traffic is awful on Bald Hill Road (Route 2). I hate coming in here on Saturdays for that reason.”
The busiest times, according to Paolino, are weekends, mornings, evenings between 6:00 and 8:00, and “lunchtime. A lot of people work over here and go shopping on their lunch breaks.”
That doesn’t leave shoppers too many options for light traffic excursions to Warwick, and once the holiday season arrives, “any time of the day will be bad,” said Paolino.
Route 2 contains three of the top 10 most dangerous intersections in Warwick, according to a traffic analysis conducted by the Warwick Police Department for the period of January 1 to August 1, 2000.
The intersection of Route 2 and Toll Gate Road ranked first, with 33 accidents during that time period; Route 2 and East Avenue third with 24; and Route 2 and Universal Avenue was sixth with 17 accidents.
“With the growth of the city, there are more and more cars,” said Lieutenant Kerry Holsten of the Warwick Police Department’s Traffic Division. “[The three Route 2 intersections that rank on the list] probably contributed to the volume of traffic that is there.”
Haxton said he feels part of the lure of Route 2 is its reputation for being the place where “you can find a good deal – there’s everything,” and added that he prefers to see the flip side of doing business on a busy road.
“The traffic is about the only negative,” he said. “It’s better than having nobody on the road. People wouldn’t be building more and more stores on this road if it wasn’t worth it to be on it.”
Current roadwork should help solve some of the road’s major issues; Route 2 is being repaved. New drainage systems are being added, and in some sections, the road will be widened to five lanes, according to John Pilkington, assistant chief of construction operations for the state Department of Transportation.
“Only about a third of that area requires reconstruction; the rest requires only resurfacing,” he said.
Workers have removed the existing concrete base of the portion of the road that is to be widened, and will install a temporary asphalt overlay for winter. Work will come to a close around mid-November, so as not to interfere with holiday shopping traffic. Work will be resumed next year; the entire project, which stretches from East Avenue to the 95 ramp, will be completed by the end of October 2001.
In the spring a new, high-tech traffic signal system will be installed in hopes of cutting down the number of cars stopped at red lights, or “stacking.”
For its part, the City of Warwick is attempting to increase the percentage of landscaping at Route 2’s new developments and reduce the number of curb cuts.
