Morning host Luis Hernandez met with developer Chris Marsella in January at the construction site behind the building which currently houses our studio and the Rhode Island Foundation. It will soon be the home of Track 15.
“If we were here, 45 years ago, actually 40 years ago,” he said, “we’d be underneath tracks that were elevated coming all the way through this site and going and sort of bisecting the city into two.”
The tracks were moved underground and a few blocks to the north for what is now the Amtrak and MBTA station.
“And then that created an opportunity here at Union Station to redevelop and restore what are these beautiful historic buildings into what eventually became these mixed-use sites, with five office buildings, the Courtyard hotel and five very successful restaurants,” including the first Capitol Grille in the country.
Chris Marsella’s father, Romolo, was instrumental in that earlier renovation of Union Station. Now 83 years old, he’s been involved in the project management for the new food hall. He told me he’s looking forward to seeing the space return to its former glory. “ Food halls generate tremendous traffic to bring people back downtown from the region in large numbers,” Romolo said. “And that’s what we’re looking for, because it creates the activity that used to be a Union Station years ago. So we’re excited about that.”
The Rhode Island Foundation and the radio station that would become The Public’s Radio moved into the building in the late 1990s, and the area flourished for a while. But in 2015, the Capitol Grille moved across the street, and Bar Louie closed a few years later, leaving the space empty.
Chris Marsella said the area has been dead, despite being at the center of the city – even before the COVID-19 pandemic. “That was our driving force of saying, okay, we got to do something here,” he said.
Even though the nearby Providence Place Mall is facing financial struggles, Chris is confident that now is the right time to open the food hall.
“The city is not quiet. It’s happening. And I think the problem is this immediate area is not,” he said. “There is no program and there’s no activity. And you have a beautiful Waterplace Park and river walk, but what happens out in that space when it’s not WaterFire? So how do we work on this? Well, one of the reasons we really like the food hall model is because they have been proven around the world to help activate urban centers, as well as neighborhoods outside of the center.”
Chris described what we will get to see when Track 15 opens as, “a transformed Union Station central terminal building. And for the first time in history, within the historic building, underneath the historic building, to create this nearly 19,000 square foot interior space, that is a showcasing of seven local chefs with big kitchens to be able to do all of their things; a huge back of house to be able to make the whole thing operate; and a really large bar, right in the center of things,” he said.
He also has a vision for the plaza outside the space, taking up about 8,000 square feet. He described it as “really an underutilized and never programmed space,” which will now be reimagined as a space for “outdoor dining, outdoor events, outdoor programming. And how that connects to the riverwalk and Water Place Park, as well as to the other spaces around us, I think is really critical to reinvigorate the center of the center of downtown.”
Even though the outside of the building was still looking pretty rough in late January, Chris took us inside, where the food hall was starting to take shape.
“ You’re standing underneath what was like a bridge structure, where all of this beautiful brick vaulted ceiling is, that is original, all from 1898. It’s also pretty much the only interior part of the building that survived the fire in the 1980s,” he said
“So this was it. The shell of the building remained. Roof was gone, but it burned everything else in between except for this structure. So it’s really, a great sort of storyline of the building we’ll be able to show through some of the photography that we’ll have in here. You can see how the tile is edged and etched and sort of cracked. And that’s meant to look like, you know, 1890s, early 1900s.”
The space will be home to seven food vendors, all of them new concepts from beloved local chefs and restaurants: fish and chips joint Dune Brothers, upscale Mexican from Dolores, burgers from There There, and two Italian concepts from the chef behind Giusto. There will also be an Indian restaurant from the owners of Rasoi, and a Turkish restaurant called Tolia. It’s a carefully selected group of businesses chosen to showcase the best of what Rhode Island has to offer.
Chris said that it wasn’t easy to convince the restaurateurs to join the project because, “at that time, about two years ago, when we started seeing, gauging interest, it was the worst time in the world for the industry, the restaurant industry. These guys were struggling. These men and women who were trying to keep their doors open while being chief cooks and bottle washers at the same time. And here we are talking about opening up another location,” he said. “So it took some convincing. As interested as people were, I think what made them really interested was the fact there was an interesting model behind it.”
The seven restaurant counters will line the back wall of the space with a giant seating area in front of them. One of the wings will be reserved for private events, and there will be a small performance area for musicians or stand-up comedy. There will be a large bar in the middle of the space and giant windows to bring in natural light to what is essentially the basement of an old train station.
Chris said they plan to open Track 15 on March 18, but there’s still a lot of work to do. “So we have a very busy end of February, early March to make sure we open up on that Tuesday to a crowd,” he said. “That week alone in the city is going to be bananas because March 18 people start arriving for the NCAA tournaments. We’ll know which teams are going to be in place here on that Thursday, the 20th, and then on Saturday, the 22nd. That is following St. Patrick’s Day on the 17th. Then there is the Culinary Collective, and the Wine Experience Festival happening here on the 27th through the 30th. And in addition to a few huge conferences in town. March is gonna be madness.”
You can learn more about Track 15 here. And you can find more episodes of Artscape at thepublicsradio.org/arts.
