Diamond Hill Plaza bids for registry

Property owner offers choice of three spaces for new DMV location

WOONSOCKET – At the urging of Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt, the owner of Diamond Hill Plaza is the only com- pany looking to offer the Division of Motor Vehicles an alternative site to house the Pond Street registry.

New York-based Madison Properties’ offer includes three alternative spots in the 2000 Diamond Hill Road shopping plaza anchored by Price-Rite and Burlington Coat Factory, said Sam Rapp, Madison’s director of leasing.

The DMV opened the bids Friday after a widely publicized effort to attract offers.

“Oh, wow!” exclaimed Rapp when he learned Madison’s was the only bid.

Rapp gave Baldelli-Hunt the credit for tipping Madison to the news that the DMV was looking for space to move the registry from its current location at 217 Pond St. He said Madison owns close to 70 shopping centers around the country, and he couldn’t think of another mayor who is so aggressive about helping the company populate its properties.

“There is no mayor out there that goes out of her way the way she does,” said Rapp. “She told us this was coming up. She is always ready to help and always going above and beyond.”

The mayor was pleased to hear Rapp’s compliment, but she was also disappointed that her efforts yielded just one bid.

The mayor said she encouraged the owners of Walnut Hill Plaza to tender an offer as well. Walnut Hill is struggling with a high vacancy rate, but for reasons she can’t explain, the company didn’t compete for the DMV.

She said a plaza-based DMV would not only be convenient for registry clients, it would draw traffic that could benefit neighboring merchants.

“Every effort should have been made by the owners of Walnut Hill Plaza to respond,” the mayor said. “I feel they owe it to the other businesses that are still there.”

Moreover, the mayor said, with just one bid in play, there is still a chance that the DMV may be forced to look elsewhere if Madison’s offer doesn’t satisfy the state.

The DMV says it was looking for a minimum of 5,000 square feet of floor space with plenty of parking, preferably on a RIPTAbus line. The state agency wants to beef up manpower, add more service windows and try out a new queue system – all in response to brisk demand for registry services from the northern Rhode Island area.

Besides the DMV headquarters in Cranston, the branch at 217 Pond is the second-busiest of all DMV satellites, accounting for 11 percent of all registry transactions. Other branch offices are located in Providence, Warren and Middletown.

Madison offered one site of roughly 4,500 square feet, another that’s just 5,000 square feet, and a third that’s 23,000 square feet. Rapp said the company is willing to subdivide the latter. They are the only spaces available in the 23-store, 223,000-square-foot mall – a lease-to-vacancy ratio of nearly 90 percent. Madison purchased the plaza from the Bryn Mawr, Pabased WP Associates last year.

Paul E. Grimaldi, spokesman for the DMV, said there would be no immediate decision on whether the offer is suitable to meet the needs of the registry.

He said the state’s purchasing division will review the offer and, if necessary, seek permission from the State Properties Commission to enter into negotiations.

“This will all take a few weeks,” said Grimaldi.

This is the third time in roughly two years the DMV has gone out to bid for new registry space exclusively in Woonsocket. If this attempt proves unsuccessful, as were the prior efforts, DMV would issue a new request for proposals later this year, opening up the search area to “anywhere in northern Rhode Island” in hopes of drawing a greater number of offers, according to Grimaldi.