7 minute read
SPOTLIGHT
SOMETHING NEW SPOTLIGHT
COFFEE BREAK: Kerri Gaffett, owner of Block Island Coffee, takes a break from her psychotherapy business to show off one of her blends at her North Kingstown storefront.
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PBN PHOTO/ELIZABETH GRAHAM
New brew puts island on the map
BY MARY MACDONALD | MacDonald@PBN.com
A CAREER IN COFFEE wasn’t what Kerri Gaffett planned as she sailed around the world with her then-husband and young children, sampling different coffees as they dropped anchor in various locations. But her sailing life led to a longtime friendship with a woman who later launched a coffee business in the British Virgin Islands.
When the islands were heavily damaged in a hurricane three years ago, Gaffett helped her friend sell her coffee from her base on Block Island.
The effort eventually prompted her friend to suggest Gaffett start her own coffee business.
“And that’s where the idea started for me,” said Gaffett, a psychotherapist who has her practice in North Kingstown.
This year she started Block Island Coffee, sourcing beans from Mexico that are certified by the Rain Forest Alliance as being socially responsible and sustainably grown and harvested. Gaffett has partnered with a coffee roaster in Connecticut that roasts and bags her coffees. She distributes them to several independent markets, including the Block Island Grocery, Belmont Market in South Kingstown and A-Market in Newport.
The flavors, including Mohegan Bluff Medium Roast and Black Rock Dark Roast, are making a name for the island and Gaffett. n
BUSINESS IS BOOMING: Rob Cagnetta, owner of Heritage Restoration Inc. in Providence, and Marguerite Keyes, finishing specialist, work on restoring some windows. Cagnetta said Heritage is as busy as ever despite the COVID-19 pandemic because people are home more and discovering things they don’t like or that need to be fixed.
PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
Home restorations on rise
The trend is to repair, not replace BY MARY MACDONALD | MacDonald@PBN.com
IF IT STILL WORKS, KEEP IT. If it doesn’t work, fix it. That’s the principle behind historic preservation of family homes and other residential buildings, as practiced by the employees and owner of Heritage Restoration Inc.
The company, which will celebrate its 20th anniversary this year, specializes in smaller projects, mostly residential, that involve restoration and preservation of historical and older buildings.
The approach to preservation is different than most construction specialties, which now are often using prefabricated sections. When he approaches a project, owner Robert Cagnetta said, he’s almost following a set of instructions as to how to treat the building.
“Something like a window at your house. This can be fixed, so we’re going to fix it,” he said. “Anything that can be repairable, we’re going to keep. Anything that can’t, we’re going to reproduce.”
The projects that Cagnetta accepts can be as small as a broken door lock or a door that will no longer shut properly. Or his team can go all-in. Their work to restore the windows of the Leroy King House, a McKead, Kim and White design in Newport that dates to 1885, involved restoration of 97 windows in the house to original function. The project contributed to the owner winning a Doris Duke Historic Preservation Award in 2010.
Cagnetta is a graduate of Roger Williams University, with a major in historic preservation and a minor in architecture. He started out as a nonprofit employee working for Goodwill Industries of Rhode Island.
He opened Heritage Restoration in 2001. His customers are primarily residential property owners who want to save their buildings. The properties may be historical, or they may just be aging and loved.
“The customers are people who already know they want to keep a building. They’re not calling a company called Heritage Restoration to get a cheap remodel,” Cagnetta said.
It can be a door latch that’s not working, or a window that’s drafty and won’t open.
Windows are an example of something that is cheaper to replace, short term, than save. But long term, it’s more cost effective to repair and keep them in the building, Cagnetta said.
He’s worked on glass that’s as old as the 1770s.
“We restore old windows,” he said. “The short-term economics of restoring an old window isn’t there. It doesn’t make sense. If you look at it over 100 years, it’s a lot more cost effective to restore it.”
Rhode Island is filled with structures that have old windows. Most can be saved.
And younger homeowners are seeing the benefits of keeping what is already there, partly out of an ecological standpoint.
“A lot more of the younger generation are aware of the sustainability of keeping an old house,” Cagnetta said.
Through the COVID-19 pandemic, that attitude has multiplied. The company is as busy as it’s ever been, he said. People are home more, looking at things they don’t like, that should be fixed.
“They’re finding things that are annoyances. It could be two or three windows. It could be a floor. It could be an alteration. It’s not big things and that’s OK,” Cagnetta said. n
OWNER: Robert Cagnetta LOCATION: 8 Robin St., Providence TYPE OF BUSINESS: General contractor focused on historic preservation EMPLOYEES: 15 YEAR FOUNDED: 2001 ANNUAL SALES: $1.2 million
HOT TOPIC Down year is OK for Block Island
BY CASSIUS SHUMAN | Shuman@PBN.com
BLOCK ISLAND’S TOURISM-DEPENDENT business owners entered the summer fearful of the damage the COVID-19 pandemic would do to their livelihoods, but most report that they had a “decent” tourism season that will tide them over into 2021.
“We were down, but we were way better than we thought we would be,” said Jessica Willi, Block Island Tourism Council executive director. “No business has closed, as of now. But it’s still a struggle.”
Willi said island tourism was “flat or down slightly” overall in 2020 after a slow start in June. Business picked up dramatically in the shoulder season of September, a much-needed boost after a less-than-stellar July and August, which is normally the high season when tourists flock to Block Island by the thousands each day, Willi said.
Her assessment was reflected in the town of New Shoreham’s 2020 tax revenue.
Town officials said $29,524 in local hotel tax – 1% charged on room rentals – was collected in June, down more than 27% from the $40,868 collected in June 2019. By comparison, the hotel tax collected in September was $54,331, a 21% increase over the $45,018 brought in the same month a year earlier.
Overall, New Shoreham’s hotel tax revenue totaled $271,184 from June through September, a 1% decrease from the $274,147 collected during the same period in 2019.
Steve Filippi, the owner of Ballard’s Inn, said 2020 wasn’t great, but the popular beach resort has weathered leaner years.
“It was worse in 2009 during the heart of the recession,” Filippi said. “I think we were 5% or 6% worse than this year. 2009 was the worst year that I ever had. It was worse than 2020.”
John Cullen, owner of the retail stores Block Island Tees, Solstice and True North Outfitters, said navigating health protocols made things challenging, in part because extra cleaning supplies and safety measures such as plexiglass shields increased expenses even before his businesses opened for the season.
Because many of those cleaning and safety products were difficult to find on Block Island, Cullen said he often paid double the normal prices.
“Add to that the face masks we had to wear, tape all over the floor marking safe spacing, and monitoring and enforcing capacity limits made the summer of 2020 as far from normal as I could have ever imagined,” Cullen said.
In the end, however, Cullen and other business owners appear to have reached their ultimate objective for 2020: survival.
“Our goal, and hope, was to get through the summer without us or our employees getting sick, which we were able to do, thankfully, and make enough money to feed our family and pay the mortgage for the winter,” Cullen said.
Uncertainty still lingers, however, particularly as COVID-19 cases surge on the mainland, even as a vaccine is being distributed.
Anxiety over the 2021 tourism already appears to be setting in. If tourists don’t return in larger numbers next spring and summer, sluggish Block Island businesses may need government aid, Cullen said.
‘Things are changing every day, and the future is uncertain,” he said. “So, we may very well need help, such as another Paycheck Protection Program loan, to survive the next 12 months.” n
