Raidmondo talks business on Main Street
WOONSOCKET – When Gov. Gina Raimondo stopped in to visit Alda Cooke’s Main Street Cafe on Thursday, she learned about something that she would like to help fix.
Cooke told the Governor how she likes her business location at 85 Main Street where she serves a strong base of customers from her former restaurant, Kennedy Lunch, in North Smithfield.
“I built a big, big clientele and my customers from Burrillville, North Smithfield and Blackstone, and everybody still comes in here,” Cooke said while explaining how her Kennedy Lunch customers followed her to Woonsocket when she made the move nine years ago.
Cooke’s only problem today is how the number of other businesses around her have evaporated in the past few years leaving her and the New York Lunch wiener shop down the street as the only restaurants left on her section of Main Street.
“When I started, I had The Cakery next door and Vino’s on the other side,” Cooke said while explaining her neigh- bors both offered food as did the Tandoori Restaurant across the street with its Indian food menu and Heritage Coffee Shoppe down the street opposite The Call.
Like the Vintage Restaurant nearer to Market Square, they all eventually closed, Cooke told the governor.
“Now it’s just me and New York Lunch,” she said of the largely vacant area of central Main Street. Chan’s Fine Oriental Dining still anchors the opposite end of Main near the Stadium Theatre and River Falls Restaurant and Ye Olde English Fish & Chips are the mainstays at Market Square near the Museum of Work & Culture.
But while Cooke still has neighboring businesses like Timeless Antiques in the former Cakery, Flea Market Square in the former Vino’s and the 4 Zero 1 cell phone store and Rockstar Gym up the street, she still would like to see many more businesses on Main Street and the traffic they would bring.
“Like I said, everybody else is out and I am still here,” she explained. “We need more people that are working on Main Street,” she said.
Her own success is based on the fact she is a family business and she personally does all the cooking for her customers. “My food is very classy,” Cooke said while explaining how her special recipes for omelets are very popular as are her home-style lunches and sandwiches.
Gov. Raimondo asked the business owner about her busiest days, and Cooke noted that her weekends are non-stop as the restaurant draws its regulars to Main Street on their leisure time.
Raimondo, in fact, got a lot of information on Main Street’s needs during her visit while talking with Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt and others about potential improvements for the district.
Creating jobs is a key component of Raimondo’s economic development focus and she heard good news from Max Brickle, president of the Brickle Group, during a visit to his Woonsocket operations.
Brickle was “very complementary of the state’s new job training program and is encouraging us to do more of that,” Raimondo said. “And I talked to the mayor about how we could combine them with her efforts and make sure that the jobs which are available at Woonsocket manufacturers go to the people of Woonsocket,” Raimondo said.
“So we were brainstorming around how could we, literally match up people who are unemployed in Woonsocket with open jobs at companies. Or for students who graduate this year at Woonsocket High School who are not going to college or the military, how do we, literally to a person, go find those people and tap them into a state training program or apprenticeship program so that they have a job,” Raimondo said.
As for all the business vacancies on Main Street, Raimondo also offered a few ideas for helping.
“We need to attract investors, and I think this is an opportunity to make some small loft apartments,” she said. Baldelli-Hunt had talked with the Governor about a few buildings in the area that could be suited to that purpose and Raimondo said she would like to work with the mayor on finding investors to consider such development in the area.
“I think we probably do have a need for 20 somethings and 30 somethings to have affordable small apartments,” she said.
Raimondo said she also sees opportunities in the area for tourism. The state also has a revised historic tax credit program called Rebuild RI that could contribute to redevelopment efforts in the city and the city has already made use of the Main Street Grant program and other state funding sources for the improvement work it has already started in the area.
“I think you just have to stay at and even be a little more urgent about it. This stuff doesn’t happen overnight,” Raimondo said.