Alex and Ani to join city’s eclectic downtown mix

ALEX AND ANI INC. founder and president Carolyn Rafaelian. / PBN FILE PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY
ALEX AND ANI INC. founder and president Carolyn Rafaelian. / PBN FILE PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY

Downcity’s Westminster Street is a virtual smorgasbord of boutique shops with unique clothing, craft, and coffee shops lining a path from Empire Street to near Kennedy Plaza.
Specialty restaurants and Eno, a wine shop that offers tastings twice a week, helped land the street a must-see mention in The New York Times’ recent long-weekend trek to Providence as part of its “36 Hours” series.
But one block over, its parallel neighbor, Weybosset Street, is more like the proverbial stepsister than a twin when it comes to retail.
With a few exceptions, its atmosphere is much more about convenience, despite boasting the Providence Performance Arts Center.
“You have to be different to get people downtown,” said Steve Smith, owner of City Girl Cupcake at 99 Weybosset St. “It can’t be just restaurants. It’s got to be more to get people here.” Weybosset is in fact set to get one more tenant this fall when Alex and Ani, the popular Cranston-based jewelry company opens a new storefront location at 159 Weybosset. The four-story building previously housed American Apparel, a clothing store featuring goods manufactured in the United States.
The building also will house a Teas and Javas coffee shop – Alex and Ani’s newest retail venture – and the brand new AA University, which the company is billing as an extension of its corporate training program – and Seven Swords Media, the Lincoln media company Alex and Ani bought last spring and renamed from Mediapeel Inc.
“[Creator] Carolyn [Rafaelian] and I had always felt that Providence [was a place] we wanted to have a significant contribution. We hope it helps reinvigorate that whole area,” said CEO Giovanni Feroce. “This situation allowed for us to put our retail location in place and justify the balance of the building with our other efforts.”
Alex and Ani bought the Weybosset building for $3.3 million earlier this year. Plans are in the works to invest around $750,000 in renovations, most of those cosmetic, to bring it in line with the company’s established look.
The announcement came at the same time Alex and Ani revealed it had purchased Sakonnet Vineyards in Little Compton for $8.45 million. CEO Giovanni Feroce said that move was a reinvestment in Rhode Island’s economy that fits within Alex and Ani’s culture of promoting locally sourced goods.
The company plans to sell Sakonnet wines at its Teas and Javas shops.
Alex and Ani began looking at the Weybosset property in late 2010. Feroce said he was attracted to its location across the street from Johnson & Wales University’s Providence campus quad and within the pathway college students often walk to the Providence Place mall.
Feroce said an adjacent parking lot – a rarity in downtown Providence – was another selling point.
“It is, for all intents and purposes, a brand-new building and we certainly wanted to be positioned to serve the student [population],” Feroce said. “The street-level, retail location made it a perfect situation.”
Besides JWU, Weybosset can boast of a few points of pride. The Providence Performing Arts Center, perhaps the street’s most well-known attraction, is a major draw with Broadway-series shows.
Gourmet Heaven, a catch-all foodie shop with a to-go meal bar and deli, sits about a block and a half down from the theater.
Scattered along the rest of the street are a shoe-repair shop, Pronto Café, and a take-out pizza place.
Hardly vacant but still not the destination-style shopping seen as necessary to attract more foot traffic.
“[Boutiques] are the types of shops that downtown needs,” Smith said. “We’re a cutesy shop and [Alex and Ani] is sort of the same concept. They’re commercially successful and I’ve got to believe it’s going to bring people here.”
Joanna Levitt, director of retail leasing and marketing at Cornish Associates, a Providence real estate development company, said the Weybosset market is the same as Westminster or Washington Street, where most of the firm’s properties are located.
“The demand for space downtown has noticeably increased and that’s a great thing,” Levitt said. “We find that more often than not, people are looking for smaller spaces with more character where they can have an experience that’s unique.” •

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