Back to normal? Not so fast.
2021 was mixed bag for Blackstone Valley in year two of the pandemic
WOONSOCKET – Hey 2021! You were supposed to be the year we got back to normal.
How’d that work out for ya?
With the advent of vaccines, Year Two of the pandemic was going to be the downhill part of the slope – or so everybody thought. But the end of 2021 is looking a lot like it began, with a new wave of COVID-19 driving up infection rates, worries about gathering with families for the holidays, long lines at testing facilities and a growing sense of uncertainty about a possible resurgence of restrictions on social gatherings and business activity. The indoor mask mandate is already back.
But before we got here things did seem a lot more normal, and hopefully we’ll get back there soon. Of course, the light at the end of the tunnel began in 2020, when the oldest and infirm among us became the first to receive the vaccine, but it wasn’t until after the first couple of months of 2021 that the shots began finding their way into the arms of people in their 70s, 60s and, finally, younger people. Many local residents got their jab at the Monsignor Gadoury clinic that the city established in Park Square, but there were plenty of clinics around – including high-volume, state-run sites, like the long-shuttered Sears and Roebuck in Walnut Hill Plaza.
If 2021 taught us anything, it’s that the journey back to normal may end up looking like a two-steps-forward, one-step-backward kind of affair. But we did make progress.
It took longer than anyone might have imagined, but schools fully reopened for live classes in the city in 2021. It was a gradual process that didn’t see the complete abandonment of “hybrid” classes and a return to full in-person learning until around April – just weeks from the summer break.
The hard-hit restaurant industry, hammered by curfews and indoor capacity limits, lurched closer to normal as newly-minted Gov. Dan McKee lifted restrictions on indoor seating. Restaurant-goers are often discovering a changed experience, however, as their favorite meals reach their tables later, and with higher price tags, amid pandemic driven labor shortages and spiraling inflation.
Some restaurateurs threw in the towel in the midst of pandemic hardship. Fazzini’s and Champ’s Diner, among others, changed hands. Some, like Chan’s Fine Oriental Dining, beefed up the take-out model to stay afloat.
Speaking of Chan’s – legendary proprietor John Chan had quite a year. He became a septuagenarian. He was honored by his alma mater, Providence College, with an honorary doctoral degree in the arts. And the granddaddy of eggrolls and jazz – a reputation known around the globe – announced that his business is for sale as he plans to retire. The news shocked many in the world of jazz and blues who wonder how such a touchstone for the genres can survive without its founder.
Pandemic or not, the Beef Barn had a juicy year. After shutting down the restaurant on Great Road in North Smithfield, the owners built a near-replica in a garden-like setting about a mile way – and by the looks of it the place is more popular than ever.
In the realm of politics, the former Cumberland mayor and lieutenant governor, McKee, of course, assumed the state’s top elective office as former Gov. Gina Raimondo was tapped by President Joe Biden to serve as U.S. commerce secretary. It’s not often that the ripples of national political change are felt so close to home, but they had ramifications that reached all the way to Main Street and City Hall as Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt answered McKee’s open solicitation for applications to fill his old spot as lieutenant governor.
Woonsocket’s mayor since 2013, Baldelli- Hunt thought she had something to offer the new governor, but ultimately she withdrew, saying there’s still important work to do at home. Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos, a former Providence city councilwoman, is now McKee’s second-in-command.
At City Hall, it was a year of continuing friction between Baldelli-Hunt and the City Council – but the intensity of the conflict reached a new pitch. In September, the council voted to censure the mayor – a rare rebuke – in a flap over the construction of a shade pavilion for impounded pets. The council had instructed her to build it adjacent to the dog pound on Cumberland Hill Road, but it ended up – much to the surprise of the council – on the other side of the Blackstone River, in River’s Edge Recreational Complex, a place Baldelli-Hunt appears to favor for the redevelopment of the city’s animal control facilities.
But some of the hottest flashpoints in local politics this year weren’t between the mayor and the council – they were between the new progressive Democrats, and everybody else. Former Councilman Alexander Kithes – a rising activist among the progressives – lost his bid to remain on the council in 2020, but remained a thorn in the side of local officials, leveraging social media to criticize policymakers on affordable housing, the homeless and other issues. At one point he ended up going to court in an attempt to get one member of the council, James Cournoyer, to cease his rhetorical counterattacks. And now Kithes has announced he’s running for a local seat in the state legislature next year.
At least one outspoken figure from the political arena passed on in 2021. Former Councilman Richard Fagnant died unexpectedly in mid-July – quieting a voice many thought could never be silenced.
But 2021 wasn’t all bad for the elected officials who command the levers of the government machine. Thanks to Congress, there’s more grease in the apparatus than ever after the passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act. It’s been a windfall for the states and cities, including Woonsocket, which expects to see more than $70 million trickle down to its schools and municipal government through the end of 2024. So far, the city has committed some $13 million of the funds, mostly for recreation and infrastructure projects, but the windfall is sure to drive some of the most needed and visible changes to the city in many years, and they’re coming soon.
The city probably would have liked to have had its hands on some of that money before it built the new $57 million water treatment plant off Jillson Avenue. Officials finally christened the new site in September in the culmination of more than a decade’s worth of planning, sending the old water plant, an enduring eyesore on Manville Road, into overdue retirement. The new plant is supposed to be state-of-the-art, but the operators had to tweak the filtration formula this fall after receiving multiple complaints that the water had a taste that some said resembled both chlorine and plastic.
For all the economic challenges posed by the pandemic, some unexpected flourishes of activity brought new life to the downtown area – and elsewhere – in 2021. As near-lockdown conditions gradually eased, the Commercial Block, a multi-storefront, three-story building that dominates the southern leg of Main Street that had long been sadly vacant, blossomed with a string of mom-and-pop stores. And the owners have embarked on renovations to the upper stories in anticipation of housing a new state tenant – the Northern Rhode Island Higher Education Center.
Likened to a similar facility in Westerly, the NRIHEC has been called a game-changer by elected officials – a place where non-college bound students can train for good jobs with some of the region’s leading service employers, including AAA of Southern New England, CVS Health and Amica Insurance.
The long-quiet banks of the Blackstone River – once a steadier draw for investors anxious to capitalize on mill-era, waterfront real estate – saw some renewed activity in 2021 after a lengthy hiatus. Brisa Development, a New York company, acquired the stunning Bernon Mills complex and continues to make progress with permits and grants en route to a plan to convert the onetime manufacturing site into a mecca of new housing.
The Woonsocket Police Department had another busy year, on track to once again log over 2,000 arrests. One bright spot is that fewer of them were the result of a homicide in 2021. The only killing of the year happened in the Plaza Village complex in April when a man in his 40s was allegedly shot to death by his son. The prior year, there were four homicides that occurred within a tight span of time – a higher concentration of deadly violence than the city had seen in decades that some in law enforcement theorized was driven by the economic hardship and emotional strain of the pandemic.
As 2021 comes to an end, we’re grappling with a new strain of COVID-19 – Omicron – that experts say appears to be catchier than Delta or any of the other previous strains that first came ashore in early 2020.
Good news, though: The early data is that it causes a milder infection than the others – a ray of hope for that longed-for goal of returning to a world more like the one we used to live in. Even if it isn’t quite normal.