SCRAPPY DEAL: By moving into Providence’s Allens Avenue, Sims Metal Management secures an industrial waterfont. / PBN FILE PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN
Forecasts of a fully fledged economic recovery kicked 2011 off with promise and the hope that Rhode Island’s ailing real estate markets would soon be pulled from the post-housing-bubble doldrums. Instead, commercial and residential real estate muddled along this year behind a weak economy that couldn’t quite get off the ground. New development in the…