Shri Studio a 'model' for future businesses at McDevitt Building
PAWTUCKET - A brand new yoga center, Shri Studio, is nearing completion at the historic McDevitt Building, another sign, say some, that the re-growth movement is advancing in the city's downtown area.
It may have been difficult to imagine when more than 10 containers-worth of trash and rubble filled the space just a few months ago, said a representative for the property this week, but the brightly-lit space should be ready to welcome patrons sometime in March.
Linda Dewing, a principle and broker with local real estate company Places and Spaces Realty, said that Shri Studio's owner, Alison Bologna, and those she's working with should be praised for persisting "through thick and thin" during the sometimes slow restoration of the McDevitt Building.
"They should really be commended," said Dewing, who indicated that Shri Studio will be a model for the rest of the spaces now being renovated at the acute-angled McDevitt Building.
Dewing said that securing Bologna and her studio is the first step in what she and the Farietta family hope is a steady filling of the 27,000-square-foot building.
"Good things are happening," she said. "It takes time, but good things are happening."
At 3,000 square feet, Shri Studio will be the largest yoga studio in Rhode Island, according to Patti Doyle, spokeswoman for Bologna with the RDW Group.
Currently, said Dewing, she is in talks with a number of other business owners to lease space at the McDevitt Building. Among the proposals are a jewelry shop, a tattoo parlor, a barbershop, a three-person artist/graphic designer/musician group looking to relocate from Providence, and even a 2010 political campaign headquarters.
The Massachusetts-based Farietta family ownership group has invested more than $600,000 into the McDevitt Building since they purchased the property in 2005.
The Fariettas had inked deals with several tenants prior to January of 2009, but progress was derailed when they were cited for fire code violations in their building at the intersection of West Union Avenue and Broad Street.
Those fire code issues have been addressed, said Dewing, and the new and improved McDevitt Building is ready to welcome lessees.
It was code issues that forced the departure of several tenants the Fariettas had secured in January of this year, a setback Dewing says the owners overcame with more of the same tenacity they've displayed since they purchased the building in 2005, along with even greater personal financing of the massive project.
The ultimate goal, one the Fariettas are counting on coming to fruition, is that the comprehensive renewal effort currently going on in the downtown area will make the McDevitt Block - and the entire downtown - at least in part the destination it was in the late 19th- and early 20th-century.
According to Pawtucket historians, the former Kinyon Block was renamed by the McDevitt family when they purchased it after years of leasing in 1919. Business would then boom for a business that originated in 1892 as McDevitt's Men's Wear.
The steady flow of traffic would go uninterrupted until the 1960s, when a disrupted traffic pattern and infrastructure changes brought on by the city's urban renewal project halted the steady stream of customers and put the once prominent McDevitt Men's Wear out of business.
Skepticism has built ever since, according to Dewing, as a number of redevelopment efforts in the downtown, and more specifically at the McDevitt Building, have failed.
But if you look closely, she added, that pessimism is starting to turn.
Never, said Dewing, has the downtown revitalization effort been so concerted, so prolonged, and so successful. From residential mill developments like the Slater Cotton Mill, now about 65 percent full, to the many businesses now up and running at the Grant Building, to a dance academy and the yoga studio now opening, many people are recognizing that good things are happening here. Added Dewing, too many people have now invested too much in time and financial resources for the modern-day downtown revival to die.
Copyright @Breeze Publications Inc.
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