I’ll be at a meeting/session/thingy about the future of Eagle Square in Providence. I won’t go into too much of the history of it (in part because I am not very knowledgeable on that), but it used to be a series of old mill buildings in the Valley neighborhood on Atwells Ave. between Eagle St. and Valley St. Many of the buildings were torn down before the residents got the city to step in and the developer used the original buildings for the rest of the project, but a large parking lot, strip mall, and a big box space replaced the buildings that were demolished. It’s that big box space that this meeting is about.
The space was a Shaws supermarket, a decent one (at least by my standards). It had wide aisles, decent produce, and lots of ethnic foods (and it was rarely out of the items that I would be looking for, unlike the Shaws in North Providence). Earlier this summer, Shaws announced the closing of 2 under-performing stores in Providence – this one and the one on North Main St. I have never been to this store and seen it jam packed, but I always attributed that to the size and spaciousness of the store, as well as always having more than enough registers open (which many grocery stores don’t do). I have also never seen the store completely dead, unless I went later at night. Unfortunately, what’s done is done and the store officially closes at the end of this week. Unofficially, the store started closing 2 months ago when they started actually removing stock from the shelves rather than let it get bought out and simply not re-stock. I have been in the store twice since they started removing stock. The first time I realized I need not go back, the second time was to see if I could get any good deals (but they didn’t have any closeouts unfortunately).
This meeting tonight is about the future of that space and what the residents of the area would like to see there. Serving the surrounding neighborhood is a Price Rite in Olneyville Square. They might be cheaper, but they don’t have all the same stuff a regular supermarket has. One option that was mentioned was to split this space and put in a low price store (like Price Rite, Sav-A-Lot, Price Chopper, etc) and try to get a Trader Joe’s in the other spot (the store of Trader Joe’s moving to Providence is a long one and apparently they don’t want to be here without parking, which this space has plenty of). That would have the benefit of the good produce and items that Trader Joe’s has (at really good prices, much better than Whole Foods and many times even Shaws) and the low cost of the other store for the regular grocery items. I’ll report about the meeting later tonight after it takes place.
If you want to go (and if you live in the neighborhood or the city, I think you should try to go):
When: Tonight, August 29 at 7:00 pm
Where: Providence Public Safety Complex Auditorium (1st Floor), 325 Washington St.
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