As the owner of one of the state’s few psychology practices that provides neuropsychological testing and evaluation, Karen Gieseke and her services have been in high demand since the business opened 27 years ago.
Even the locations of Karen Gieseke Ph.D. & Associates Inc. – initially in Middletown and eventually in Bristol on the east side of Narragansett Bay – did not affect the flow of clients.
“We’re not just in the East Bay, in a little corner of Bristol,” Gieseke said. “We get referrals from all over the state.”
A bridge has changed that.
With more people than ever on her waiting list – mental health challenges surged during the COVID-19 pandemic and never receded – clients have struggled to get to appointments at the practice’s Bristol office since a portion of the Washington Bridge suddenly closed in December because of safety worries.
And it’s not just the clients.
Frustration over much longer commutes with no solution on the horizon for at least two years has led some of Gieseke’s specialized employees to call it quits.
“I have now lost two employees to the bridge debacle,” Gieseke said. One was a testing technician who had been with the practice for eight years.
“Losing a really good employee is just killing me,” she said. “Then I had another employee who is fairly new … and she decided [the commute] was too much of a hassle, and she got a job in the Providence area.”
[caption id="attachment_465208" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]
PUB PROBLEMS: Eileen Harvey, owner of Skeff’s Pub on North Broadway in East Providence, says business has been down because traffic jams caused by the Washington Bridge lane closures have kept some customers away.
PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
‘LIKE THE PLAGUE’
Gieseke’s experience is being played out at businesses in nearly every sector across Rhode Island and nearby Massachusetts, as the damage to a major transportation artery – Interstate 195 – continues to ripple out on both sides of the Seekonk River.
Customers aren’t showing up. Employees are quitting. Deliveries are delayed. Sales are down. Trips anywhere in the region are often defined by whether the route will include crossing Rhode Island’s Rubicon.
No one has assembled a solid estimate of economic losses, but frustration appears to be building as what many business owners are asking for – such as tax abatements and fee waivers – and what public officials are offering – such as a state plan for a $400,000 marketing campaign – aren’t matching up.
“Marketing should be a piece of [the state’s strategy], but not all of it,” said Eileen Harvey, owner of Skeff’s Pub on North Broadway in East Providence, who has seen a significant loss of business. “You could market the hell out of something, but if people don’t want to drive there, they’re not going to go.”
Meanwhile, the bridge problems have led to the cancellation of popular events such as the Providence Marathon, which has attracted 6,000 runners in previous years, and the annual Holy Ghost Feast organized by the Trinity Brotherhood club in East Providence.
And the transportation troubles have caught the attention of at least one airline operating at Rhode Island T.F. Green International Airport, which markets itself as a convenient alternative to congested Logan International Airport in Boston.
Breeze Airways has been texting passengers with warnings to plan for traffic tie-ups so they can arrive for flights on time, although company spokesperson Ryne Williams says the airline hasn’t seen any noticeable changes among passengers arriving late or missing flights in recent months. (The R.I. Airport Corp. did not have passenger volume data available beyond December, as of earlier in April.)
The effects of the bridge pinch point haven’t been all bad, in some cases creating microeconomies on the east side of the Seekonk River. For instance, restaurants are reporting that while they may not be seeing as many familiar faces, they’re seeing new ones.
“You might gain some customers that used to go past you to go over the bridge,” said Timothy Howes, an associate professor and chair of the accountancy and finance department at Johnson & Wales University. “People are still going out to eat, still go to hair salons. But they’re not going to cross that bridge, so if a business can grab more market share of the people who are on their side, then hopefully there’s not as much of an impact.”
Jonathan Hawkins, who owns Warren-based Hawkins Home Improvement, acknowledges he has changed his purchase patterns, crossing into Massachusetts for building materials he would normally buy in Rhode Island. And he doubts he’s alone.
“I’d imagine that instead of going to Rhode Island businesses, [the bridge closure] pushes people into buying in Massachusetts more,” Hawkins said.
[caption id="attachment_465209" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]
FOR THE RECORD: Kevin Morosini, owner of Olympic Records in Providence’s Fox Point neighborhood, says he’s avoided big business losses because his customers don’t have much choice to go there. There are not many other local record shops, he says.
PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
Kevin Morosini, owner of Olympic Records located in the Fox Point section of Providence – nearly in the shadow of the Washington Bridge – says it’s the fear of hitting traffic rather than the traffic itself that is driving customers away.
For the most part, he says, Olympic Records has avoided business losses.
“I’m such an oddball shop that either people will come here, just barrel through the traffic and wait,” Morosini said. “I’ve skirted it a little bit because there’s not a ton of other record shops that you could go to to avoid the traffic.”
His local customers are often willing to make the drive over the bridge outside of the morning and evening commute hours, but people traveling from farther away are a different story, often refusing to come to the shop regardless of the time, the day or the actual traffic conditions.
They “avoid [the Washington Bridge] like the plague,” Morosini said.
CANCELED PLANS
It’s been that way since Dec. 11, when the R.I. Department of Transportation suddenly ordered the closure of the westbound side of the bridge because of a critical failure of some of the components that dated back to the 1960s.
That sent westbound traffic – an eight-lane bridge that normally carries about 100,000 cars a day – streaming into side streets in East Providence as drivers looked for alternative routes to the Henderson Bridge into the East Side of Providence.
The backups have improved somewhat since RIDOT shifted some of the westbound traffic on the eastbound lanes, but another blow came when inspectors concluded that the closed part of the bridge would have to be demolished and rebuilt – a two-year process or longer.
Now some days and times, traffic approaching the Washington Bridge moves smoothly through the pinch point, leaving motorists to wonder if the end of the trouble is near as state transportation officials test new travel patterns. Other times, traffic moves excruciatingly slow, and crashes along narrowed lanes have skyrocketed.
[caption id="attachment_465210" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]
WAIT AND SEE: Jessica Leach, owner and co-founder of Opt Eyewear Boutique in Providence’s Wayland Square, with her husband, Jed, left. Leach has seen a decline in the number of clients who want to cross the Washington Bridge in recent months.
PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
The situation is particularly painful for Jessica Leach, owner of OPT LLC, which does business as Opt Eyewear Boutique in Providence’s Wayland Square. She says she draws about 35% of her customers from southeastern Massachusetts, the result of successful advertising efforts across the border before the bridge closure.
Now many of those clients have vanished, in part because proper eyewear fits often require more than one visit, meaning multiple trips across the bridge.
Leach has had to rule out Rhode Island as a location for her optical trade show, which attracted 500 professionals this year in Brighton, Mass., and she is expecting up to 2,000 people at the show next year in Worcester, Mass.
Across the river on North Broadway in East Providence, Skeff’s Pub had been booked to host and cater a small trade show, but that was canceled.
“We could have made thousands off of that,” said Harvey, the owner. The vendor “was very apologetic. He said, ‘I just don’t think my customers want to sit in bridge traffic. Everybody avoids that part of the state.’ ”
It’s one of many challenges the bridge closure has presented to Skeff’s, located on what’s become a congested throughway since the bridge programs.
Harvey says former customers are more focused on getting out of East Providence, rather than stopping for food or drinks on the way home from work. For 2024, the pub’s revenue has so far decreased 21%.
In response, she reduced the business hours and laid off a cook. And as the business approaches summer – typically among its slower times of the year, as customers tend to flock to waterfront restaurants – Harvey anticipates more difficult decisions could lay ahead.
“Thinking about the answers actually scares me to death,” she said. “It’s one of those things where you really have to face reality and say, what do we need to do different?”
MISSING THE TARGET?
Many business owners have griped that the state and local officials mostly have failed to provide meaningful help.
At an East Providence City Council forum in March, some voiced frustration that financial assistance has largely come in the form of U.S. Small Business Administration loans, saying that they’re reluctant to take on more debt.
And some who do apply, such as Marco Pacheco, owner of Jordan’s Liquors in East Providence, say they had their applications denied based on data that doesn’t reflect their current financial status.
A spokesperson for the SBA declined to provide data on how many businesses have had their applications approved or denied as of April 18, citing limited reporting capabilities as the organization updates its database.
At the forum, business owners encouraged city councilors to provide financial relief through measures such as tax and fee waivers, with one attendee advocating for an East Providence-specific currency system to encourage spending that stays within the city.
East Providence officials are still looking into these options, City Council President Robert B. Rodericks says. But “the total loss of dollars from all that [city] revenue is something you’ve got to be careful about,” Rodericks said. “We still want to offer resources to help businesses, so we have to have some revenue base to work with.”
He doesn’t blame business owners for being dissatisfied with loans, though.
“They’re not looking for loans,” he said. “They’re looking for some outright help.”
Gov. Daniel J. McKee’s plan to provide $400,000, redirected from hotel tax revenue, to power a marketing campaign “to help spread the message that East Providence and the East Bay are open for businesses” hasn’t exactly been warmly received.
Also part of the plan: McKee has submitted an amendment to his fiscal 2025 budget proposal, seeking to redirect pandemic relief aid to support companies hurt by the bridge closure – $600,000 for East Providence businesses, $400,000 for Providence businesses and $300,000 other businesses.
A bigger help, Harvey says, would be using that funding to suspend property taxes for businesses, or to provide relief on insurance costs.
“Sales have declined, but everything else remains the same,” Harvey said. “Your mortgage is the same. Your property taxes are the same, your electric and heat. … But you have less revenue to cover your expenses with.”
Leach says she recently tried to work with what the state is providing through its marketing campaign, having recently facilitated a video shoot for Wayland Square businesses under the marketing campaign. But she found the experience “fractured, disjointed,” she said, with no clear timeline for when or where it will air.
“I don’t think that’s a good use of funds,” she said.
WORKER WOES
Even with more financial assistance, worker retention and attraction could prove to be one of the most noticeable longer-term impacts on business owners, Howes says, noting that the commute itself “changes the calculus of how much time an employee is working.
“If you have employees who are on the margin of thinking of doing something else with their lives, and they have some other opportunities available, that might sway a small portion of your employees,” he said.
That was the case for Kim Mather, Gieseke’s longtime testing technician at the psychology practice’s Bristol office.
“This is more than a transportation issue,” Mather said. “It’s definitely a quality-of-life issue, and I think for most people, an economic issue.”
Mather lives in South Kingstown and would typically take the Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge to get to work. Even before the Washington Bridge closure, construction on the Pell Bridge had made her commute longer.
But when the westbound Washington Bridge closed, more commuters started taking the Newport bridge 20 miles away to get to the East Bay and back. Indeed, the R.I. Turnpike and Bridge Authority saw a 3.2% increase in eastbound traffic over the Newport Pell Bridge in March, compared with a year ago. Westbound traffic increased 8.9%.
For Mather, the increased congestion made the trip unbearable.
Now she only goes to the office once a week – Sunday, when she can avoid the most commuter traffic.
And she’s only sticking it out until she closes out her waiting list of clients. With a high demand for her services and a shortage of qualified professionals, families have been waiting for the remaining appointments for at least four to five months, Mather says.
Mather was already eligible for retirement benefits, but now the transportation snarls are pushing her into a full retirement earlier than she’d anticipated, she says.
“I’m a really good problem-solver,” Mather said, “but this, I just couldn’t see a workaround.”
