Projo Biz Blog

Home supplies retailer Lowe's opened its store in Quonset today, a sign that the $144-million Gateway development is continuing despite the economic downturn.

Kohl's, the other large tenant at the 72.5-acre site, was the first retailer to open at the Gateway, being developed by the New Boston Fund. Locally owned supermarket Dave's Marketplace is scheduled to open on the property this spring.

The 117,000-square-foot Lowe's was built for $20 million. It will be staffed by 175 employees at a time when Rhode Island is suffering from rising unemployment. (The Providence Journal reported today that the state fund that pays unemployment benefits is nearly empty "and potentially unable to pay benefits past March.")

"The opening of Lowe's is the latest example of the success we are seeing at the Gateway," Patrick Cleary, of New Boston Fund, said in a statement.

The development is designed to attract high-wage jobs to the state-owned Quonset Business Park, in North Kingstown. Of the projected 2,000 jobs at the development, 1,200 are expected to be in office buildings. But the Lowe's and Kohl's stores dominated much of the debate in the months before the project won state approval. Critics objected to the inclusion of what they called "big-box" stores in what had been advertised as a village environment.

In a compromise agreement in 2007, the developers moved the large retail stores behind a planned Davisville Square, "a collection of small shops, cafés and benches," The Providence Journal reported at the time.

The Quonset Business Park is overseen by the Quonset Development Corporation, a division of the state Economic Development Corporation.

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