Mayor takes to airwaves to connect with business

BEHIND THE MIC: Pawtucket Mayor Donald R. Grebien, left, interviews city restaurateurs Jack Doherty and Brandon Harnois, right, for his weekly radio show, “The Mayor’s Corner.” / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY
BEHIND THE MIC: Pawtucket Mayor Donald R. Grebien, left, interviews city restaurateurs Jack Doherty and Brandon Harnois, right, for his weekly radio show, “The Mayor’s Corner.” / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY

“How do we, as a city, help support you?”
That’s an inquiry a lot of business owners would love to hear from elected officials. But for former businessman and Pawtucket Mayor Donald R. Grebien, asking such a question is routine.
It’s just one part of a larger outreach effort aimed at city businesses that has seen him host a weekly radio show, visit workplaces, spur the ongoing creation of a City Hall guidebook to streamline permitting and convene monthly summits for business, with about six regular attendees so far.
“We hear constantly from business that the only time they hear from the city is when we need something,” said Grebien, who hopes to turn around that impression by reaching out to commercial concerns on a regular basis. “Everyone wants new business but the reality is, how do you build a relationship with a business? What can you do to support them?”
Grebien was elected mayor of this city of approximately 72,000 people in November 2010 with 63.5 percent of the vote. He worked for American Insulated Wire in Mansfield from 1994 until his election, employed most recently as corporate transportation supply-chain manager.
Affable and easily approachable, the lifelong city resident served five terms on the Pawtucket City Council from 1997 to 2008 and was council president 2005 to 2007.
On a recent Friday, Grebien posed the key question – “how can we help you?” – to two restaurant owners, Jack Doherty and Brandon Harnois, during the taping of his weekly radio show, “The Mayor’s Corner,” on station WBZS 550-AM located in the Concord Street Business Park off Smithfield Avenue in Pawtucket.
The half-hour show, hosted by Diana Ricci of WBZS, is taped every Friday for airing Monday at 9 a.m. as part of the “Rhode Island Matters” program on the business station that also features Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal news. The mayor and his staff choose the guests and topics to be discussed. Prior taping does not allow for call-in questions.
The two restaurant owners appeared on the mayor’s third show; guests on previous shows included Keith W. Stokes, executive director of the R.I. Economic Development Corporation, and Bob Billington, president of the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council, also in Pawtucket. Ricci, an account manager at the radio station, said the station approached the mayor to do the show and, although it is taped ahead of time, she maintained that it does not need to be because Grebien “is so good at it, he’d be able to do it live. He’s a natural.” The weekly shows began airing Jan. 2.
Before taping began on a recent morning, Grebien easily chatted with the two restaurateurs, explaining what a great “opportunity” it was to let listeners know what’s going on in Pawtucket and at their businesses.
Both opened new eateries recently. Doherty started his sixth restaurant and second in Pawtucket, Sullivan’s Publick House on Armistice Boulevard, and Harnois began Cresta Bar & Ristorante on Main Street downtown, in the former Apex building.
Once on the air, Doherty tells listeners that his new venture is a family oriented, Irish pub that seats 24, is open seven days a week, and he opened it because his other Pawtucket restaurant, Doherty’s East Avenue Irish Pub, “was so busy we needed a second venue.
“Pawtucket’s been great to us,” he said. Doherty has been in business six years and, since Grebien became mayor, “the culture is like night and day,” he said. “People have a get-it-done attitude.”
Harnois, who said he used to work at Ardeo at Waterplace in Providence, said his eatery also is open seven days a week, specializes in Italian food made from scratch and has a deck for outdoor eating. He plans to have theme nights, live music, karaoke, trivia contests and weekend DJs. Both owners make ample use of social media.
What City Hall could do for Harnois is provide more parking. He is working to arrange valet service for his customers, he said. Grebien revealed that plans are in the works to expand parking downtown.
As a result of the mayor’s monthly meetings with city businesses, a consultant was hired to consider parking and traffic modifications to downtown, as well as tweaks to minor zoning matters. These changes will “be a model” for other areas of the city, Grebien said. On-street parking was added in some downtown areas and parking requirements for certain downtown developments were lifted, to cite two examples provided by city Planning Director Michael Davolio. With an eye toward creating a cluster of restaurants to draw diners from far and wide, Doherty and Harnois would like more competition, they told Grebien.
Harnois spoke of the “beauty” of downtown, but added that it needs “some life. We’d like to see more competition and more traffic. It’s really the more the merrier,” he told Grebien. “A rising tide raises more boats,” added Doherty.
To show how little he is perturbed by competition, Doherty related how he walked into a rival’s restaurant one weekend night a few weeks ago and discovered no bartender on duty. So, what did he do? He pitched in and tended bar a few hours. Competitors are no more than “comrades-in-arms,” he said.
Whether Grebien will be able to bring more restaurants to downtown Pawtucket remains to be seen, but he is doing what he can to provide support to business, to listen to the problems that business owners have and, whenever possible, to nudge his City Hall managers into faster action. His business background can lead to “much frustration on a daily basis because of the challenges” of slow-paced government, he agreed.
He spoke of a tattoo parlor that spent eight months waiting for a license because a zoning variance was needed. “That’s not right,” Grebien said. Hearing from business owners helps him make his case to department heads at City Hall, he noted, and when swift results are not possible, his business background helps him know how to best present such bad news to an anxious entrepreneur.
“My philosophy is to get out of business’ way and let the business do what it needs to succeed,” Grebien said. •

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