A new view in Cranston
01:00 AM EST on Wednesday, December 5, 2007
BY Benjamin N. Gedan
Journal Staff Writer
A decade after it unveiled the $75-million project, Carpionato Properties is racing to complete Chapel View, an ambitious collection of housing, retail, restaurant and office space that is reshaping the Cranston skyline.
Several buildings have already been constructed or rehabilitated on the property, adjacent to the Garden City shopping center. They house a variety of businesses, such as the Villa de Moda Boutique and a Johnny Rockets hamburger restaurant.
But an incomplete, five-story building now rising on the site is arguably the most noticeable sign that the long-delayed project is nearing its end.
Construction crews have assembled the steel skeleton of the 107,000-square-foot structure, known as Building 2000, and the Johnston-based developer says it will be finished next fall. Workers have begun installing the stone, glass and stucco exterior.
“It will be a destination, and the tone has really been set,” Kelly M. Coates, Carpionato’s senior vice president, said. “We look forward to finishing it off.”
This week, Coates and three other Carpionato executives were in New York City, seeking potential tenants at an International Council of Shopping Centers event.
Building 2000, at the intersection of Route 2 and Sockanosset Cross Road, will reserve its first two floors for retail shops. The third floor will be marketed as office space, and the top two floors are being divided into 18 penthouse condominiums. The building also includes an underground garage.
The only Building 2000 tenant announced so far is a Not Your Average Joe’s restaurant, and Carpionato has not sold any of the condos. But the developer is opening a sales office later this month or in January, and Coates appears confident he will find businesses for the retail and office space.
By late January, Carpionato also hopes to complete 14 condos in Building 1000, a 77,000-square-foot structure that already houses ground-level retail shops and restaurants. On its second floor, U.S. Sen. Jack Reed and several businesses rent office space.
That building is next to a one-story, 5,600-square-foot Ted’s Montana Grill and across the parking lot from a mostly single-story, 156,000-square-foot complex that houses an REI outlet and a Shaw’s supermarket.
Next fall, Carpionato plans to open Building 3000, a three-story, 42,000-square-foot structure with two floors of retail and one floor of office space. The company has not announced any of its tenants.
The final component of Chapel View, a restaurant to be called “Chapel Grille,” is scheduled to open next summer in the renovated chapel building that gave the project its name.
The three-story, 10,000-square-foot restaurant will be owned by Carpionato president Alfred Carpionato and a “star chef” who has not been publicly named, Coates said yesterday.
“We are going to add in a great group of retailers,” Coates said. “It feels great. It’s been a long process.”
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