Bridge to Nowhere: Checking in on the Washington Bridge Crisis

Cassie Brimmer woke up sick to her stomach the morning of Tuesday, Dec. 12.

It was the day after the Washington Bridge closed due to structural damage, and the owner of Rhody Roots, a Warren eatery that serves up sushi, comfort food and all-day breakfast, knew what small business owners would face in the months ahead.

“We just did this with COVID,” she says. “Small businesses just took such a hard hit. Some just barely survived. With this, they will close within the year.”

The Rhode Island Department of Transportation closed the westbound side of the bridge on Dec. 11, 2023, after consultants found two failed tie-rods. The span is one of the busiest in Rhode Island, according to RIDOT, carrying some 96,000 cars a day over the Seekonk River into Providence and East Providence. 

Vehicular pandemonium followed. Motorists seeking alternative routes clogged the streets of Providence, especially near the Henderson Bridge, Wayland Square, and South Water and Gano streets. East Providence thoroughfares were just as congested, with drivers queuing to get on and off Route I-195, particularly on Warren Avenue, Broadway and Taunton Avenue. Commuters faced sometimes hourlong delays. 

In March, Governor Dan McKee announced the bridge would be demolished and rebuilt. Initial estimates range between $250-$300 million, with the project being completed within eighteen to twenty-four months of awarding a contract, he says.

Some of the initial traffic woes have since eased, thanks to weight restrictions on Providence roads and adding more lanes to the bridge. But countless business owners have been riding a revenue roller coaster ever since that December afternoon. Some have seen sales drop as much as 60 percent. Restaurant dining rooms have turned into ghost towns on certain nights. And the timing of the closure — right in the midst of the holiday shopping and party season — was particularly brutal. 

“The impact is severe,” said Bob Burke, owner of Providence’s Pot au Feu, during a House Small Business Committee hearing in April. “This is not solely an East Bay problem. It is a small business crisis on both sides of the river.”

 

‘A townie, through and through’

After first opening Atmosphere CBD Cafe in Cranston, Rob Baptista wanted to relocate to his hometown of East Providence. The city has seen a renaissance of sorts during the past few years, attracting new businesses and housing developments to a revitalized Riverside Square, center city and waterfront areas, and Baptista wanted to be a part of it. 

“I’m from East Providence. I’m a homeowner in East Providence. I’m a business owner in East Providence,” he says. “I went to the high school. My girls are in the school system. My parents live in East Providence. I’m a Townie, through and through.” 

He moved Atmosphere to Taunton Avenue in 2020, serving CBD-infused acai bowls, breakfast sandwiches and coffee drinks and hosting events like crochet and movie nights in a cozy cobalt building and adjoining patio. Last year he found a building on Valley Street, just steps from the bridge on an industrial route that runs parallel to the Seekonk River, and closed the Taunton Avenue location in July in preparation for the move.

That’s the last time Atmosphere was open for business. 

A number of hurdles — a squirrel infestation in the building, bureaucratic obstacles and the increased costs of doing business in a larger space — made Baptista reconsider the move. But the bridge situation, and the murkiness of the rebuilding timetable, made him pull the plug on the brick-and-mortar location. 

“I was willing to wait it out,” he says. “But I made the decision once they decided to tear it down and use a two- or three-year timeline. As things have gone so far, I have no faith that they’ll finish that in two to three years.” 

He credits Mayor Roberto DaSilva with trying to find a way to keep Atmosphere in East Providence. But in the end, the mounting costs and traffic were just too much to handle. 

“It really took a financial toll on me,” Baptista says. “Things were just progressively getting worse, and I did not want to find myself in a position of sinking more into a money pit.”

‘The state has failed us’

The Washington Bridge closed the same week that Ana Duque and Karen Mejias held the grand opening celebration for their zero-waste wellness shop, the Heal Room, in its new East Providence location. The decision to move from Pawtucket was a no-brainer, they thought, since most of their clients were from the Providence area.

“This was supposed to be a really good move for our Providence customers because they were going to be a lot closer to us,” says Duque. “But it actually made it worse because it’s harder for people from Providence to get to East Providence than anything else.”

They’ve added more events, like clothing swaps and yoga classes, thanks to the larger space. But when people ask where they’re located, their faces fall.

“We tell people we’re in East Providence and their reactions are like, ‘Oh. I’m not going there,’” she says. 

Many city and state officials came to the store’s grand opening, she notes, but she has seen none since, even though the Taunton Avenue store is
directly across from City Hall. 

“It’s tough to be the only one who’s rooting for you,” she says. “We’re the ones that do all the marketing — and I understand this is a business and that’s part of it — but there’s a catastrophe happening that’s out of our control. What is the city doing to build us up during this really tough time where people don’t feel that good about their businesses and about themselves? It’s just really hard. We need support.”

The city is doing several things to help business owners, says DaSilva — like holding a small business resource fair in March, hiring a small business liaison, hosting a Washington Bridge Business Recovery Center in City Hall, applying for grants and sending out frequent updates on social media and newsletters. He’s often out in the city, visiting local businesses and encouraging his social media followers to do the same. But the city can’t reach out to everyone, he says.

“We’re here to help,” he says. “We try to put as much stuff as possible out there, but sometimes, despite all the efforts, we have people who don’t hear about the resources,” he says. “Sending somebody out to every single business and knocking on every single door — I think we have 1,600 businesses in the city of East Providence — would take an immense amount of time away from being able to help businesses day-to-day.”

 

With locations on Hope Street and the West End of Providence, Frog & Toad has become an Ocean State icon, selling whimsical and Rhody-centric merchandise since 2001, and creating T-shirts, bags and other merchandise to raise funds for local organizations and nonprofits. 

The store’s bestselling item in December 2023 was a black bumper sticker that says “I did not survive the I-195 Washington Bridge Debacle 2023.”

Almost four months to the day of the bridge shutdown, on April 3, Asher Schofield — who owns the store with his wife, Erin — spoke at the State House before a House Small Business Committee hearing for affected business owners.

Small businesses, he said, feel like they have an “unwritten, unspoken” contract with their government, paying more than their fair share of taxes in exchange for a quality of life and services that bring customers their way and allow them to operate.

“This situation is a breach of that contract,” he said. “We have steadfastly been contributing to the state, happily, because it’s a wonderful place to live, but the state has failed us here. And we need help to get through this time.”

Like Duque, he would like to see more support from city and state leadership.

“We’re used to our elected officials’ refrain of ‘small businesses are the backbone of our economy,’” said Schofield, who also spoke on behalf of thirty other businesses as cofounder of the Hope Street Merchants Association. “And while we appreciate every December having our elected officials come by our shops and restaurants and encouraging people to shop local, this is a time to put our money where our mouths are.”

Since December, Frog & Toad’s sales have fallen by 5 percent. It might not sound like a lot, he said, but that equals $20,000, and “for a small-time guy that’s a lot of money. If you prorate that over the course of a calendar year, that’s $65,000 times how many years it takes to complete this project. That’s money that I can’t afford to pay my staff.”

 

Revenue Woes

local businesses were just starting to climb out from under the pandemic’s economic shadow when the bridge crisis hit, says Heather Singleton, the interim president and CEO of the Rhode Island Hospitality Association.  

“I don’t think that enough people realize that we are still in recovery from the pandemic,” she says. “One business owner told me that it was not until this past October that they started to see numbers like they had pre-pandemic. So they’re starting to feel good about coming out of the pandemic and then all of a sudden, this happens. It’s like two steps forward and five steps backwards. They’re just feeling very, very beat up at this point.” 

The hospitality industry is the second-largest in the state, Singleton says, with 87,000 employees. 

“We are a major economic driver.” 

In December 2023, East Providence saw a 6.3 percent year-over-year decrease in the meal and beverage tax, while Providence’s increased by 4.8 percent, according to the R.I. Department of Revenue. Those numbers flipped in January, with East Providence seeing a 1 percent increase and Providence dropping by 5.6 percent. 

“That equals $3.2 million in revenue and $600,000 in tips for employees,” said Pot au Feu’s Burke at April’s hearing. 

The figures track with what he’s seeing at the restaurant, with Friday night sales off anywhere from 30 to 50 percent because of rush hour traffic. As a result, they’ve reduced workers’ schedules, something we “never want to do,” he said.  

One employee lives in Coventry and allows two hours to travel into the city on Fridays, he said. Another who lives in Pawtuxet Village allocates forty-five minutes for the commute. 

Harut Matkasyan, owner of the Riviera Restaurant in East Providence, told the committee that the closure came at a critical time for his restaurant.

“December is the worst month this could have happened,” he said. “It should have been our best month because of all the Christmas parties, but instead we had a lot of cancellations. That kind of revenue is hard to recoup when your expenses stay the same.” 

He’s seen a 40 percent decline in business and a steep drop in future banquet bookings. To offset the losses, he’s delayed repaving the parking lot and installing a new ceiling and lighting inside the restaurant. Without relief, he’ll have to reevaluate his staffing needs, something he’s trying to avoid. 

Mare Rooftop has also seen a sharp drop in patrons. Business at the restaurant, which serves Mediterranean fare from atop its commanding perch at the corner of Wayland Avenue and Waterman Street in Providence, has declined by 30 percent, with weekday nights being especially slow.

“Being right here in Wayland Square, we rely heavily on people coming across the bridge,” says Brendan Moran, the restaurant’s director of operations. “They would jump right off at Gano Street coming from the East Bay, or over the Red Bridge. But people from the East Bay don’t want to even come to Providence at this point, just because of what traffic has become. And now the Gano Street exit’s closed, so they can’t even get off there anymore.”

Mayor Brett Smiley sees two categories of businesses, post-bridge, in Providence. The first are the Wayland Square merchants subject to the detour issues. Anytime there’s an accident on the Washington Bridge, motorists divert over the Henderson Bridge, he says, clogging what was a “very walkable, pedestrian-friendly” commercial district.

The other businesses are suffering from the reputation that the city is hard to get to, which isn’t the case, he says. 

“There’s no detour traffic that impacted Federal Hill,” he says. “And yet, there are still dinner patrons that have this idea that it’s impossible to get to Providence so they shouldn’t bother going to dinner on Federal Hill. And that’s true of many businesses throughout the city.”

Across the bay, the staff at Rhody Roots in Warren was hit hard during the pandemic, pivoting and completely flipping their concept to keep the restaurant going. They were just starting to see an uptick in sales when the bridge closed.

“We’re definitely down,” says Brimmer, whose restaurant also serves as a Frog & Toad pick-up point for East Bay residents who don’t want to pick up their purchases in Providence. “There’s been way less Providence traffic, but when people do come here, they let us know they crossed the bridge. They say, ‘We crossed the bridge for you. That’s how much we love you.’” 

 

A Measure of Relief

To help ease congestion, RIDOT crews expanded the eastbound span of the bridge to three lanes on April 10. They also added another lane, for a total of three, on the westbound side, in late April. 

In Providence, the City Council approved a fifteen-ton weight limit on several East Side roads, including Angell, Waterman and Gano streets, in early April. The move will discourage heavy trucks from using the roads to bypass Washington Bridge traffic.

Smiley suggested relocating South Water Street’s bike lanes to add an extra lane for cars, an idea met with heavy pushback from the public and the City Council, which passed a resolution in April opposing the measure. The mayor will hold public hearings throughout the summer to get feedback on the plan. 

On April 3, the same day that the House Small Business Committee heard testimony from affected business owners, McKee and Rhode Island Commerce announced a funding strategy to help small businesses. 

McKee will redirect up to $400,000 in hotel tax revenue for a marketing campaign encouraging people to buy and dine locally in the areas most affected by the bridge. RI Commerce will propose a strategy to offer $300,000 in direct grants to small businesses and $800,000 for technical assistance and special events. 

McKee also filed a $1.3 million amendment to the 2025 fiscal budget. If approved, $600,000 would go to affected businesses in East Providence in the form of grants and other assistance, and $400,000 would go to Providence. The remaining $300,000 would benefit businesses outside those cities.

RI Commerce will also make up to $1 million available to add signs, beautification projects and infrastructure improvements in affected areas through the Main Streets RI Streetscape Improvement Fund. Separately, the Rhode Island Hospitality Association is offering complimentary twelve-month memberships to businesses in the hospitality industry affected by the closure. 

The governor also put together an outside legal team to investigate the bridge failure and see if any funds can be recovered. 

“We want to make it very clear — any responsible parties will be held fully accountable, and we will use every tool at our disposal to achieve that goal,” McKee said in a statement. 

Previously, the only financial relief available to small business owners were low-interest Economic Injury Disaster loans available from the U.S. Small Business Administration. But many were hesitant to apply because they still have debt remaining from the pandemic, Singleton says. 

“The SBA loans are available, but that’s another loan and it’s more debt,” she says. “And I’m hearing from a lot of people saying they already have an SBA loan from the pandemic that they’re starting to pay off. And they’re nervous about taking on more debt without knowing what their sales are going to be.”  

Natalie VanLandingham, who owns Myrtle in East Providence with her husband, Tommy Allen, found the application process unsettling. 

“I found it to be a little grueling and intimidating,” says VanLandingham. “The only reason we had everything ready to go is because we just took out a loan.”

Her loan officer was dismissive, saying that the event wasn’t yet a designated disaster, the bridge was back open, and that people didn’t need to come to the space until later since it’s a bar, she says. 

“That’s pretty discouraging to hear.” 

Amelia Olson, the owner of Tall Tumbleweed, a clothing boutique in Riverside Square, refuses to take on any business-related debt, saying it’s not the solution to the complicated morass. 

“I’ve never taken a loan from the city, the SBA or any other institution to start my business or to open the brick and mortar,” she says. “Loans and debt will not solve our hardships due to the bridge, either in the short term or long term.” 

After spending $1,000 to prepare and file the paperwork, Riviera Restaurant’s Matkasyan was denied an SBA loan. 

“They said, ‘You have enough funds to deal with it,’” he says. 

As of late April, 1,228 small business owners in Rhode Island had applied for Economic Injury Disaster loans, according to Michael L. Lampton, acting deputy director of the Small Business Administration’s field operations center in Atlanta.

 SBA representatives, he says, are “in tune” to the type of circumstances applicants are going through, and he finds it difficult to believe they dismissed local applicants’ concerns.

 “Not to say it didn’t occur, but I can’t imagine our loan officers telling applicants, ‘You have enough funds,’ or ‘the bridge was back open,’” Lampton says. “It’s hard to believe that one of our people in those circumstances would respond like that.”

 

The Route Forward

Since the bridge’s closing, several restaurants and food trucks have closed or are moving to new locations. 

El Ninja, a Japanese-Latin American fusion spot, shuttered its Providence eatery on Broad Street. And citing a tough winter, rising food costs and the bridge closure, Hunky Dory in Warren announced in February the closing of its 800-square-foot restaurant.

Feed the Cheeks, a shop known for its overstuffed gourmet cookies, told Instagram followers it would close its flagship Wayland Square location sometime this year and move to Garden City Center in Cranston. (It also has a store on Angell Street in Providence.)

Husband-and-wife owners Mahran Izoli and Nur Shahida Roslan have since reconsidered, saying they’ll decide the future of the Wayland Square store after seeing how the summer unfolds and whether they’ll be approved for an SBA loan. Sales at that location have been down by 50 to 60 percent since December, Izoli says, and making deliveries between the two East Side locations has been a nightmare.

“It’s typically a three-minute drive, but when it’s rush hour, it takes us almost twenty minutes to get to the store. It’s just bumper-to-bumper traffic and it’s only less than a mile away,” he says.  

They hope to open the Garden City Center location in late summer/early fall. 

Baptista, the owner of Atmosphere CBD Cafe, is taking his business on the road this summer. He’ll be slinging sandwiches and coffee drinks from his newly wrapped trailer, set up next to a tent in a cafe-like setting. In the meantime, he’ll keep looking for a storefront location, preferably in East Providence. 

“But I’m not going to force it,” he says.  

He’s eager to be a part of the city’s renaissance, but still remembers the East Providence of his youth, with empty storefronts and shuttered businesses, and wonders if the bridge crisis will deter future developers and shop owners from putting down roots. 

“Businesses aren’t going to want to come here. People aren’t going to want to come here because of the bridge,” he says. “What we had before was a lot of boarded-up buildings. A lot of empty spaces. And I’m not confident that it’s not going to look like that again in another year or two.”

 

How to Help Local Businesses 

“Our businesses need your support now more than ever. If you have a favorite  restaurant here in the city and you want to brave the bridge to come over for lunch, there’s no traffic during lunchtime. You come in and you go out, you take care of business.” —East Providence Mayor Roberto DaSilva 

“If you’re going out for lunch, order an extra meal and bring it home for dinner. Or if you’re going out for dinner, order a couple of extra meals and eat them at home the rest of the week.” —Heather Singleton, interim president and CEO of the Rhode Island Hospitality Association

Providence Restaurant Weeks returns July 7–20 with a full roster of special deals and prix-fixe menus at city eateries. Visit goprovidence.com/rw for more information and a list of restaurants.