Hub eyed for power brokers

Even in a city known for its restaurants and political dealing, The Procaccianti Group sees a need for a meeting place where Providence politicians and business leaders can hash out a few deals over drinks.
And the Cranston real estate development and property-management firm thinks it has found just the place at the Renaissance Providence Hotel, which it bought from Sage Hospitality in the final days of 2012.
The 272-room Renaissance, a Marriott franchise, is expected to remain virtually unchanged under the deal, but Procaccianti has big plans for the restaurant-lounge known under the previous ownership as Temple.
In the next three to six months, Procaccianti intends to renovate, retool and rebrand the restaurant and lounge into a hub for Ocean State power brokers looking for craft cocktails and seasonal food.
“Basically, we want to create a meeting place that brings together the Statehouse with the Financial District,” said Procaccianti spokesman Ralph Izzi Jr. “In Washington, D.C., you have a lot of those kinds of places and in Providence I don’t know of one, at least one situated between the capitol and downtown like this.”
Procaccianti plans to launch the new restaurant, with a new name, chef and concept, next month, before beginning work on interior renovations. Until that official relaunch, many details of the new project are being kept secret.
But what has emerged is that the space, especially the large lounge, will focus on the increasingly fashionable world of “artisanal” cocktails, original mixed drinks that often employ nontraditional ingredients.
“A lot of what’s new these days is in the craft-cocktail culture,” said Frank Recupero, partner in Procaccianti’s Downtown Restaurant Group. “In some ways it is bringing the whole farm-to-table aspect of food into cocktails. It is more of a bespoke cocktail, made to order, with infused vodkas and bourbons. It is like bringing elements of the kitchen out behind the bar.”
When it opens, the new Renaissance bar will hardly be the first or only establishment in Providence to highlight craft cocktails. In fact, most of the restaurants in the city with the best reputations for innovative cuisine take a similarly creative approach to drinks.
But many of those places are part of the fiercely independent, somewhat quirky, local culinary scene, which doesn’t always cater to the suit-and-tie crowd. The year-old Dorrance in the ornate, first-floor lobby of the Union Trust Building may be the most high-end of the places known for its original mixed drinks. By embracing craft cocktails at the Renaissance, Procaccianti is perhaps hoping to leverage the trend against incumbent business and political favorites like the Capital Grille in the old Union-Station building.
Befitting the craft cocktails, Recupero said the food at the new Renaissance restaurant would be sophisticated, seasonal and locally sourced in a “gastro-pub-meets-modern-American” format.
In its Temple incarnation, the restaurant drew most of its customers from the hotel above, but Recupero sees the new kitchen drawing many more locals and becoming a destination in its own right.
When Procaccianti announced the Renaissance purchase Dec. 27, the restaurant, which serves the hotel as well as its own guests, closed for several hours in the transition, but was running again later in the day.
Rights to the restaurant’s former name, Temple, remain with Sage Hospitality, of Denver, which built the hotel inside the shell of a never-completed 1929 Masonic Temple for an estimated $100 million.
Sage Hospitality spokeswoman Kelly McCourt said the company would not comment on why it sold the Renaissance.
In the press release announcing the purchase, Procaccianti Chief Investment Officer Rob Leven said only that the Renaissance fit the company’s “opportunistic approach to hotel investments in our company’s hometown.”
The addition of the Renaissance gives Procaccianti 61 hotels in the country under either its management or ownership, including eight in Rhode Island. Unlike the restaurant and lounge, Izzi said there are no plans in place to change any of the staff on the hotel side or remodel anything.
At the Renaissance, Procaccianti Downtown Restaurant Group partner Dino Passaretta expects the renovation of the restaurant this winter and spring to be fast and cause relatively little disruption.
Like many of the rooms in the hotel, windows in the restaurant and lounge look out on the illuminated Statehouse at night. Passaretta said on a recent night he was eating there, the view was inspiring.
“It was snowing and the view of the Statehouse in the lights was picturesque,” Passaretta said. “You can’t add that to another location.” •

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