Tesla 'hub' coming to former Stop and Shop in Providence. What that means.
PROVIDENCE − Just a year after grocery chain Stop & Shop stopped paying its 20-year lease on its long empty store on Reservoir Avenue in Providence, Tesla will move into the former supermarket to create a hub for service, sales and vehicle charging in Southern New England.
The new Providence hub for the electric car maker should open in the first three months of 2024, developer Joseph R. Paolino Jr. said during a news conference Tuesday. His company, Paolino Properties, bought the complex in 2012.
It will become one of the largest Tesla locations in New England. It is located in the Mashapaug Commons complex, next to the Jorge Alvarez High School.
Once the transition is complete, the Tesla retail location will employ 30 people full time in sales, service and parts distribution.
Tesla is spending $10 million to turn the former supermarket into a car dealership, Paolino said.
"The whole thing needs to be retrofitted," he said. "You're going to say 'wow' when its done."
After Paolino bought the property in 2012, he would get calls about people on ATVs riding through it and the parking lot and garbage dumped in the building, so they had to put up fences.
"It's going to make this neighborhood a better neighborhood," he said.
Where are the other Tesla locations?
Tesla opened its first store in Rhode Island in July 2019 at 399 Bald Hill Road in Warwick.
The other nearby stores are in Massachusetts, in Norwell, Dedham and Natick, and Milford in Connecticut.
Where can Teslas, or other electric vehicles, be charged?
According to Rhode Island Energy, there are 500 electric vehicle-charging stations in the state.
Tesla "supercharger" stations are at the Neon Marketplace gas stations in Providence, Seekonk and Warwick, as well as the Cumberland Farms in Richmond, the Vanderbilt Grace Hotel and Gurney's Resort in Newport and the Weekapaug Inn in Westerly.
Can it catch up? In making the shift to electric vehicles, RI lags its neighbors.
Gov. Dan McKee, who attended the news conference along with a slew of other state and city politicians, touted new regulations that will ban the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035. Rhode Island joins California, Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington in the the 2035 ban on new gas-powered vehicles.
House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi spoke about the law passed by the General Assembly that will require new and redone parking lots, that take government funding, to add electric vehicles chargers.
How does Tesla avoid Rhode Island's car dealership laws?
Unlike most other car makers, Tesla sells directly to consumers instead of franchising through a dealer system. The legality of selling directly to consumers was questioned in Rhode Island, but attorneys for the Division of Motor Vehicles later decided the method is legal.
In 2018, the state Division of Motor Vehicles gave Tesla a dealer license to sell cars at a different proposed location in Warwick. Lawyers had to weigh in because a state law protecting franchised auto dealers bars most manufacturers from selling directly to consumers.
Since Tesla sells its cars only directly and has no franchised dealers, the prohibition did not apply.
No more gas guzzlers: State wants to phase out sales of new gas-powered vehicles in RI by 2035. Here's how they'll do it.
Thanks to our subscribers, who help make this coverage possible. If you are not a subscriber, please consider supporting quality local journalism with a Providence Journal subscription. Here's our latest offer.
Reach reporter Wheeler Cowperthwaite at wcowperthwaite@providencejournal.com or follow him on Twitter @WheelerReporter.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Tesla showroom, service center coming to shopping center in Providence
