Although he has run his barber shop in the Arcade for about three years, Bob Lepore isn’t going to have a hard time moving out by the end of the month, when his and the other 11 tenants’ month-to-month leases expire.
He’ll just pack up his mirrors and scissors and chairs and find a new lease downtown. “It should only take a day to move, I’ll get some friends to help,” he said. “Not a problem.”
But a quick tour of the Arcade, in Providence, last week, suggested Lepore might be in the minority. His shop is sparsely furnished and he offers a service. Most of the other stores have an inventory that they’ll have to move when the nation’s oldest indoor mall – built during 1828 – closes June 30 to undergo an $8 million renovation.
Don Beohner, owner of Copacetic Rudely Elegant Jewelry, celebrated his 23-year anniversary on the Arcade’s second floor on May 4. He’s not sure where he’ll end up – or how he’ll move his glass cases and clocks and jewelry so quickly.
Downstairs, Sal Libassi has the same dilemma at Shalmar Eyes & Optics. He’s run his store downtown since 1955, but finding a new lease and moving in just a month will be tough, he said.
Granoff Associates LLC, the local property manager and developer that owns the Arcade, said last week that the reason is simple: In the three years since the firm purchased the building it hasn’t made any money. And one of the largest tenants – Johansson’s Bakery, which drew 25 percent of the Arcade’s revenue – recently left.
“It hasn’t made money now for 20 years. Well, it might never have made money,” Evan Granoff told Providence Business News last week. “It’s just reached the point where, if you walk through there, it’s sorely in need of renovation.” An elevator in the building hasn’t worked for years and sweltering summers without air conditioning are tough for tenants and customers.
Granoff is hoping to find a large tenant and tailor the renovation to suit their needs, he said. And a single-tenant lease would be “ideal,” although he didn’t want to “tip his hand” on how the building might be renovated to accommodate just one tenant.
“I’ve been actively pursuing tenants since we gained control of the building,” Granoff said. “The issue is that the building isn’t going to work with the format that it is now. You need to have a tenant in there that’s going to draw on its own, an anchor tenant.”
The renovation will be required to adhere to the state’s guidelines for historic renovations, because the $8 million yearlong renovation will be completed with a 22-percent Rhode Island Historic Preservation Investment Tax Credit, for which Granoff was approved May 15. Working on the development team will be Newport Collaborative Architects, who will strive for LEED certification and update the HVAC system while preserving the building’s architecture.
Since July 2007, Granoff Associates has been involved with two large downtown deals. The firm, which includes Evan Granoff and his brother Lloyd Granoff, sold two properties – the Turk’s Head Building and the former Union Trust Building – for a total of more than $24 million. And both of those historic buildings had been significantly rehabilitated. “When we bought the Turk’s Head building, occupancy was less than 50 percent,” Evan Granoff said. “We renovated the building and occupancy jumped to more than 80 percent.”
A portion of the profits from those sales will be used for the Arcade renovation, he said.
The Arcade is in a prime downtown location, fronting on both Westminster and Weybosset streets, Granoff said.
And it abuts the vacant site on which the One Ten Westminster tower had been proposed by a development team that included Granoff Associates. Evan Granoff had been a silent partner in the project, but he’s no longer involved, he said.
The Arcade’s renovation would make it possible to link the two buildings, if construction goes through for One Ten, he added. •
Granoff Associates LLC is a Providence-based property manager and developer run by brothers Lloyd Granoff, who also is chairman of the Providence Public Buildings Authority; and Evan Granoff, who also is chairman of the Downtown Providence District Management Authority.
