Wickenden thrives on eclectic mix

PBN PHOTO/RYAN T. CONATY
NEW ARRIVAL: Providence’s Wickenden Street has been attracting many new businesses, including Art Freek. Owner Don Lussier and girlfriend, Haley Speed, watch foot traffic.

By Kevin Shalvey

PBN Staff Writer

Decades ago, the aunt of Chutema Am’s mother-in-law served as a cook at the Cambodian Royal Palace. The recipes that she learned there made their way to Am’s mother-in-law, Bopha Kemban, who recently brought those regal concoctions to Providence’s Wickenden Street.
In November, Am opened Angkor Restaurant there. It is family-run, with his nieces waiting tables and only he and Kemban in the kitchen, using many of those old recipes, including one for the spicy Tiger Cry Beef Salad.
“It’s like a personal legacy of our family,” Am told Providence Business News last week. “Before [her aunt] passed away due to [the] Khmer Rouge, my mother-in-law was able to save the recipes and bring them to this country.”
Wickenden Street, one of the retail hubs of the city’s East Side, is full of sometimes-transient stores whose owners have eclectic tastes, which is what drew Am there. He came to the United States in 1976 as part of the Refugee Resettlement Act after the Vietnam War, when American troops pulled out of Cambodia.
In Cranston, Am owned Asian Delight, another Cambodian restaurant, from 1996 to 2001, but there it was seen as “just another Chinese restaurant,” he said. His best customers – many Cambodians themselves – were coming from the Wickenden Street area to eat there, so it was only natural to move there, he said.
Angkor is not alone in its move to Wickenden Street. During the last nine months there have been several new stores opening, including two tattoo parlors – one re-locating and another opening a new branch – and a brunch-and-burger restaurant.
One of those stores is Art Freek Tattoo, which moved to Wickenden Street in October after holding shop on the second floor of the Steeple Street building for 13 years. In November, North Kingstown’s Black Lotus opened a satellite store a few blocks away.
Art Freek General Manager Steven Williamson said the move didn’t cause the shop to lose regular customers and offered a chance to expand its customer base. “We’ve seen a large number of people who had heard of us and knew of our reputation, but didn’t know where we were before because our location was so obscure,” he said.
Art Freek is near the eastern end of the street, which historically was more a residential area. It’s only one of a few stores – including the coffee shop Reflections – that’s new to the area, said Marjorie Powning, co-chair of the nonprofit Friends of India Point Park, who has lived in the neighborhood for about 20 years.
And those new stores have been attracting more residents to the area, said Marty Saklad, co-owner of Samson Realty, which moved to Wickenden Street in the fall of 2006 after about 13 years on the north end of the East Side.
This year, Samson’s seen an increase in walk-in traffic on Wickenden Street, Saklad said. “A lot of them happen to find us because they’re walking on the street” and shopping, he said. But the demand for nearby housing hasn’t yet caused residential rental rates to increase, he said. A one-bedroom apartment still averages between $650 and $1,000 per month, which is higher than the city-wide average but on par with much of the East Side rental rates, he said.
Wickenden Street isn’t alone as a retail center on the East Side – it is overshadowed by Thayer Street, which long had been the jewel of trendy, small Providence shops, said Williamson. Thayer Street’s proximity to the R.I. School of Design and Brown University campuses give it a leg-up on Wickenden Street, but rising storefront rental costs there are making Wickenden Street look more attractive to small businesses.
For that reason, it could be said that Wickenden Street’s retail is where Thayer Street’s retail was about 10 years ago, Williamson said. “A lot of the smaller and artsy places that would have been in [the] Thayer Street location in past years are now opening on Wickenden because Thayer has become more corporate and expensive,” he said.
Am said that when he was looking for a spot to open Angkor, Thayer Street was too bustling and the rents were too high. Angkor’s two-chef kitchen couldn’t have handled the traffic. “We tried to hire another chef, but they can’t really cook our food,” he said. “It’s all done by taste: put this in, put that in.”
Any street that can attract college students, tattoo parlors and a Cambodian restaurant is unique, but Wickenden Street always has attracted a diverse crowd, both in businesses and customers, said Betty Adler, owner of Adler’s Design Center and Hardware.
She emigrated from Germany in 1939 and married into the business that her father-in-law started as an Army-Navy surplus store in 1919. She’s been working there for 40 years and now runs the store with her son, Marc, and nephew, Harry.
Standing outside her store last week, she detailed the history and moves of some of the nearby stores, many of which have switched locations, opting for larger, smaller or just plain different spots. Now new restaurants, like Angkor, are again changing the face of the street, Alder said.
Another new restaurant is Blue Elephant, which opened in October. Owner Joshua Selle said the atmosphere of Wickenden Street lends itself to “quirky” promotions. He’s offering a free-coffee-every-visit deal for anyone who has his Blue Elephant symbol tattooed on their body. (Only one person has so far gone through with it, he said.) And he sells homemade jewelry that’s hung on the restaurant’s walls.
The new businesses coming to Wickenden Street seem to be doing so on their own, because there isn’t an active business association recruiting them. The Wickenden Street Business Association hasn’t been active during the last few years, according to Marc Adler.
There is the Friends of India Point Park (FIPP) organization, headed by Powning and co-chair David Riley. That organization, however, has a different mission. It works to clean up and protect the five-acre park that’s on the waterfront south of Wickenden Street.
“There used to be some antique stores on Thayer Street, then they came to Wickenden Street and now they’re leaving. It happens in layers: first come the junk shops, then come the funky restaurants and finally come” the corporate stores, Powning said.
While FIPP works locally, the city has been active in promoting Wickenden Street. In the past, it’s been the focus of a city beautification campaign. In 2002, under then-Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr., the city completed a $343,807 effort to repave sidewalks and plant trees along Wickenden Street.
The city was then promoting the impending removal of the old Interstate 195 from the area – there are on- and off-ramps at the western end of the street – as a boon to businesses on the street. But Betty Adler said last week that she wasn’t sure whether that would be the case. Instead, the stores on her end of Wickenden Street will be losing the easy highway access that they have had for so long.
Even with all the change on Wickenden Street, there are some things that stay the same, Adler said. One of those things that haven’t changed for her is that she rarely makes it to the new restaurants – although she does sometimes cross the street to Fellini’s Pizzeria.
“I usually just bring a bag lunch,” she said, holding a hand above her brow to shield out the morning sun.
And for the street’s newcomers, it is difficult to say yet how well they will fare. Selle reported that business has started off good at Blue Elephant.
At Angkor, Am said business is steady, “but, keep in mind, we’ve only been open for five months.” •