Representative Charlene Lima is calling for a constant police detail at the mall
Looking for Cheap Eats in RI?
These affordable restaurants will help your wallet and taste great.
Journal Staff
The restaurant will close by December 2026The non-renewal is drawing blowback from one legislatorThe Newport Creamery had a 10-year lease
CRANSTON – Newport Creamery will need to be out of its standalone restaurant in Garden City Center by December 2026, after the mall refused to renew the restaurant’s lease.
“We’ve been trying to get more time on our lease for the last five years, and they kept on saying ‘maybe,’ ‘we don’t know,'” Newport Creamery spokeswoman and Jan Companies vice president Janice Matthews said. “We’ve gone through multiple mall management companies. And then we’re hearing through the grapevine that they’re planning to do something else with the site, so we called and they told us they’re not renewing our lease.”
Newport Creamery’s owners The Jan Companies had a 10-year lease at Garden City Center and started trying to renew the lease about halfway through.
“We’re out of options on our lease,” she said.
Newport Creamery still has a year and a half in the space. It is one of, if not the, oldest tenant in Garden City, having opened 14 years after the mall opened. When it closes in 2026, it will have been there for 65 years.
When will Newport Creamery close in Garden City?
The restaurant will close by December 2026, when its lease is up.
The location “probably does a little better” than most other Newport Creamery sites, Matthews said.
“It’s all relative,” she said. “The better the site, the more rent you pay.”
Where will Newport Creamery go?
The company is scoping out real estate in Cranston looking for a possible new location that is not too close to its restaurant in neighboring Warwick.
“We’re very hopeful and we’re checking with all the major landlords in town, to see if they have anything,” Matthews said. “We’ve been looking at a lot of different pieces of real estate.”
If Newport Creamery finds anywhere, buildout time would be about a year.
“It’s absolutely crazy expensive for restaurant space,” she said.
If Newport Creamery finds a new space in the next six months, they could feasibly move before their lease is up.
“We’ve been in restaurant business for over 50 years, so we can move quick,” she said.
What will replace Newport Creamery at Garden City Center?
Garden City Center has not responded to requests for comment, but Matthews said she was told that no one has signed a lease for the Newport Creamery space yet.
“That’s what they told us, but I don’t know,” she said. “I have a feeling they would never be telling us we have to move unless they had a new person to go there.”
Another ‘Wally’s Wieners’ fiasco?
In a news release, Rep. Charlene Lima, D-Cranston, Providence, wrote that she and Cranston Councilman Andy Andujar will be looking to see if there are any tax breaks that can be taken away from the mall.
“(If) WS Development thinks they can pull a ‘Wally Wieners’ fiasco in Cranston they are gravely mistaken,” she wrote in the news release. “Councilman Andujar and I will fight them by any means necessary.”
That “fiasco” is the closure of Joe Marzilli’s Old Canteen in Federal Hill and its replacement with Wally’s Wieners, which serves Saugy wieners and martinis, after owner Sal Marzilli put it up for sale in 2022 because he wanted to retire.
Lima wrote that the mall owner, WS Development, has shown no concern for the displacement of small businesses.
Garden City Center has also “regressed from the care and dedication shown by the old owners. Under WS Development and its CEO Jeremy Sclar, there has been uptick in crimes and violent behavior in Garden City,” Lima alleged, calling for legislation to require a police detail whenever the mall is open.
“If WS Development thinks they can terminate an iconic Newport Creamery and bring in a foreign-based company like Apple without a fight, think again,” Lima wrote.
She would be fine with locating an Apple store, rumored to be the new tenant, elsewhere in the mall, she wrote.
That would likely mean poaching them from Providence Place.
Comments are closed.