How many spaces are open? Most of the spaces are reserved and permitted!

Some women have expressed concern about the safety of the garage especially late ...

February 5, 2010

Dear Arthur,

The owners of the new department should hire someone to walk the women in groups to the parking garage.  I have a 17 year old unemployed teenage son, with martial arts experience, to act as a polite, well-groomed escort.  

In the rare instance that I haven't found street parking on Main Street when I've dropped into Kafe Lila or the Cup & Saucer for lunch, there have been plenty of spaces in the garage. Late at night (how late would a home decor store be open, anyway?), there's never a shortage of on-street parking.

Artee Home will make its splash as a downtown regional attraction

PAWTUCKET - Sixteen years ago she moved here from her homeland of India, a creative designer seeking to live out the American dream.

For this creative designer, the United States offered a chance to expand her reach in her goal of offering exclusive fabrics not found anywhere else. With a firm resolve and practical business sense, Arti Bhandari Mehta would build a flourishing business, a $15 million home furnishings empire known the world over.

Bhandari Mehta is the owner and chief executive officer of Artee Collections Inc. She will officially open her new Artee Fabrics and Home store at Pawtucket's historic Toole Building, 228-230 Main St., next Wednesday, Feb. 10.

She said she expects a crowd somewhere in the range of 100-150 artists and designers to attend her opening celebration.

It was a winding road fraught with obstacles that brought Bhandari Mehta to Pawtucket with plans to open an high-end regional home furnishings store in the up-and-coming downtown area, she said. "This is where textiles began," she told The Breeze as she sorted fabrics at her new location last week.

Bhandari Mehta owns an Artee Collections store in Hudson, Mass., and is also a partner of another store in Westport, Mass.

Many designers and artists live and work in the immediate area of her new store, she said, but she plans on expanding her clientele well past the borders of Pawtucket - or even Providence for that matter. A new emphasis on homemakers doing their interior decorating will also help her establish a new location, she said.

Artee Fabrics and Home will supply fabric to businesses large and small.

Stores like The Fabric Place have gone out of business not because there isn't still a market for quality textiles, said Bhandari Mehta, but because they employed too many people.

"I thank God that there is still a demand and I can still do what I love to do," she said.

City officials are calling the addition of Artee Fabrics and Home a major catch for a downtown area that has been seeing scattered redevelopment efforts in recent months. The addition of Artee Home will go a long way toward tying together those efforts, they say.

"We look at this as an immediate draw," said Herbert Weiss, the city's economic and cultural affairs officer, on Monday. "There aren't too many stores like it within 50 or 60 miles that offer the type of fabrics she'll offer for making drapes, refinishing furniture, and other things."

"We here are very excited about it," said Harvey Goulet, Mayor James Doyle's director of administration. Goulet said he expects the addition of Artee Home to attract many other like-minded businesses, like furniture and antique stores.

Bhandari Mehta and Shekhar LLC purchased the historic Toole Building from local businessman Louis Yip late last year. After several attempts to open a branch of the fabric company in Pawtucket had fallen through, local redevelopment advocate Phyllis Nathanson, of Morris Nathanson Design, connected Bhandari Mehta with Yip and a final sale price of $230,000 was settled upon in December.

It was Nathanson who helped convince Bhandari Mehta to come to Pawtucket even after an effort to have her open in the Nathansons' building on Exchange Street collapsed.

"They were responsible for bringing me here," said the new downtown business owner. "I am very grateful to them."

The Toole Building, with its ornate columns, hardwood floors and beautiful tin ceilings, would not have even been available had not a condominium proposal between Yip and a condo developer not fallen through last year.

A noted expert on weaving, embroidery and fabric design, Bhandari Mehta will sell upholstered furniture, offer reupholstering services, sell drapery, custom treatments and carpets, among other offerings. Interior design consulting services will also be available.

The ultimate goal, one that has played out as planned at her other locations, is for the Pawtucket store to become a regional textile source for Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts, said Bhandari Mehta. She said she'll start by doing business only on the first floor of the five-story brick structure located near the Grant Building on Main Street, but eventually the plan is to expand upward. Under that scenario, fabric would continue to be sold on the first floor, furniture would be on the second floor, design consultation services would be available on the third floor and home furnishing accessories would be located on the fourth floor.