City RMV set to relocate on Monday
WOONSOCKET — As previously forecast, the Division of Motor Vehicles has confirmed the local branch of the Registry of Motor Vehicles will relocate to a refurbished McDonald’s restaurant in Diamond Hill Plaza before the end of the month – on Monday in fact.
The move marks the culmination of a search for an alternative to the 217 Pond St. location that dates back at least five years, driven by a need for a more accessible, customer-friendly location with ample parking, said DMV spokesman Paul Grimaldi.
“This is in a shopping plaza, a commercial zone, and it’s a high-traffic business – no pun intended,” said Grimaldi. “The registry isn’t a place that gets 10 customers a day – it gets a couple of hundred.”
The shift to Diamond Hill Plaza means 217 Pond St. – the state’s second-busiest regis- try – will close early on Friday, issuing its last customer-service ticket around noon. Workers will spend the weekend relocating office equipment, computers and files to the new location with an eye toward reopening in the shopping center on Monday at the usual time – 8:30 a.m.
Patrons will find a new, 5,000-square-foot location that’s set up like a bank branch – with teller-like service windows – and a check-in
system designed to expedite the flow of applicants for registrations, licenses and other motor vehicle credentials.
Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt – who personally intervened to keep the registry in the city – will be taking a victory lap with DMV Director Walter “Bud” Craddock over the next couple of days. She has radio interviews scheduled with Craddock on WNRI ( AM-1380 FM 95.1) today and WOON (AM-1240 and FM 99.3) tomorrow. Show times are 8 a.m. both days.
Baldelli-Hunt says the registry isn’t just convenient for patrons tending to vehicular chores – it will be a boon for businesses in the shopping center.
“I think it’s only natural when you’re in an area, whether you have a wait time at the registry or not, to see what your surroundings are for business, retail or restaurants,” the mayor said. “I think it will create additional customer flow...”
Moreover the mayor says the registry will be another draw she can use to market the city to potential business and retail investors. There are some, she said, who may think it’s a plus to be located near the registry of motor vehicles.
The city has hosted a branch of the DMV at various locations for decades – in the former Seventh District Courthouse, a commercial site next door to Chan’s, in the Rhode Island Hospital Trust Building on Main Street and the Pond Street location.
But when the state went out to bid for an alternative location to the latter in 2015 – it was almost ready to give up looking. After at least two rounds of open solicitations for possible landlords in the city, the DMV announced it would make one last attempt to find a local site before opening up bids to the broader northern Rhode Island region.
Baldelli-Hunt personally called on Madison Properties, then-owner of Diamond Hill Plaza, to urge the company to respond to the DMV’s request for proposals. Madison then offered the DMV multiple sites, including the original McDonald’s – a unit on the very southwestern corner of the rambling plaza. The site is believed to have been vacant since the 1990s, when McDonald’s relocated to a freestanding building in the shopping center.
The subsequent sale of the shopping center has been blamed with creating some confusion between the new owners and the remodeling contractor for the site, leading to significant delays in getting the doors of the new registry open. The DMV had originally planned to open in the shopping center in August.
Diamond Hill Plaza has a combined 223,000 square feet of retail space in nearly two dozen storefront units of various sizes, a few of which are presently vacant. The retail strip is owned by Woonsocket Mall LLC, headquartered in Hemptstead, N.Y., and the company in charge of leasing is Northeast Retail Leasing & Management of Windsor, Conn.