Protecting the city’s immigrant population is top of mind for Pawtucket Mayor Donald Grebien, who recently started his eighth term.
“I’m really concerned about the federal changes, how we protect our very highly cultural, diverse and immigration populations,” said the Democratic mayor.
Grebien said many are fearful of what President Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants will mean for them.
“We’re always going to side taking care of the residents, documented or undocumented. And we’ve done that in what we say the Trump 1.0,” he said.
Federal immigration authorities are now allowed to arrest migrants at places like schools and churches after Trump’s administration threw out policies that previously limited where those arrests could take place.
“There was a lot of misinformation last couple of weeks because of all those executive orders and everybody’s reacting and not having a clear picture … [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] will never tell us when they’re coming in, but we won’t be participating with them,” Grebien said.
Immigration is far from Grebien’s only concern. Long-time resident and toymaker, Hasbro, has been thinking about moving its headquarters out of the city.
Grebien said, “They decided that that building from a capital investment is no longer worth investing.”
When asked what Grebien is doing to persuade the management of Hasbro to stay in his city, he said, “And that’s hard, right? Because it all depends on what their goals are, and we’ve done everything we can. We’ve put a proposal together, and when I say that we have developers who are willing to develop the Hasbro site, put them as a class A tenant.”
The mayor is referring to the site of the former Apex department store. The city purchased the building and several surrounding properties for more than $17 million in 2021. Grebien wants the toymaker to be the anchor tenant. Seeing them leave the city, he said, would hurt in several ways.
“The financial loss to Pawtucket is a little over a million dollars,” Grebien said. “We’re not going to lose all of that because they’re still going to have the property. They’re still going to have to pay taxes, but we don’t want a vacant building. We’ll be losing some of the tangible tax, which is a smaller number. So it’s not really a major financial hit, it’s an image, it’s a pride.”
Saying goodbye to Hasbro would be a big loss for a city that still remembers the blows it suffered when the PawSox left McCoy Stadium for Worcester and when Memorial Hospital shut down.
“I tell folks all the time, ‘You wish you could control those, right?’ Because it’s not on the local government. It really becomes business,” he said.
When asked what Grebien and his administration could have done differently so Hasbro executives wouldn’t even be considering a move, he said, “Absolutely. We’ve talked about that. We have conversations. The council, even at home with my wife, you start to pull yourself off with our team … I think that if there’s anything that I could do differently is I probably would’ve spent more time knocking on the door at Hasbro, the old-fashioned way, to hold their hand a little more.”
Grebien points to the progress Pawtucket has made as yet another reason why Hasbro should stay in his hometown.
“As we sit here and we’re talking today and you see the good things that are happening, and we have the stadium and a lot of new development coming in, it’s where you need it to be. It just takes too darn long,” Grebien said.
This year promises to be a memorable one. This spring, The Stadium at Tidewater Landing will open to the public. The multi-use soccer stadium will be home to the Rhode Island Football Club overlooking the Seekonk River. Developers also plan to build out the riverfront over the coming years and create much-needed housing.
“We’re looking at about 600 units of a mix-use, mostly residential and a couple of storefronts. So that becomes the active zone,” Grebien said. “You have the bike path, you have the water access and Blackstone Valley Tourism (Council) honestly was just in the other day talking about, ‘Okay, how do we get a dock down there so we can get the boats in?’ And so it’s going to be that life-center style.”
It’s building on what Grebien describes as a renaissance in Pawtucket. Two years ago, the Pawtucket-Central Falls Transit Center opened, making it easier for many Rhode Islanders to travel to and from Boston. One block from there, a mixed-use apartment and retail center is being built with 150 apartments. The mayor said about a quarter of them will be affordable housing. The rest will be market rate.
Concerns have been raised that some of these projects are too focused on bringing in affluent commuters and could price people out of Pawtucket. When asked about those concerns, Grebien said, “Yeah. I mean, that is truly a factor right now. Pawtucket is a moderate to low-income community so we need to get some of those dollars in, but we need to protect all of the folks that are here as well. Now with the new housing legislation, it’s helpful to keep people in their homes. We need to start looking at what we do to control some rents.
“In the last two weeks, I have senior citizens who are 70 or older or have been in their homes renting for 30 years and they’re getting priced out. So there’s a balance, Grebien said. “As much as I love my community, we are considered a distressed community. We have been for years and based on our population. So we need to get a little more of that in, but balance and protect.”
Another point of concern for the mayor – the quality of the city’s school district. Five schools, including William Tolman Senior High School, are in comprehensive support and improvement status, which means they’re in the bottom five percent for academic achievement and growth. Grebien said the district is working with the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) to turn things around.
When asked if he’s worried about the possibility of the state taking over the city’s school district, Grebien said, “I don’t think we’re at a potential of a takeover. I think there could be if we as a community or as the superintendent doesn’t get the organization together, there are concerns about that. Having said that, I’m not worried. I don’t think RIDE will be coming in tomorrow to take over.”
The future hope of the city’s schools comes back to a property that today is a scar of recent loss. The old McCoy Stadium will be demolished and the site will be turned into a new Unified High School, bringing Tolman and Shea Senior High School onto one campus. Grebien estimates it’ll take five to six years before it’s open.
As for Grebien’s political aspirations, he’s open to the possibilities.
“People always ask you, ‘Are you going to run for a state office? Are you going to do this?’ I tell everybody, ‘Would I love to run for state office? It’s never, never.’ I don’t know what the next step would be. If I had my way you are looking at the Lieutenant Governor or Secretary of State, not against anybody that’s there,” Grebien said.
Whatever the future holds, Grebien said one thing is for sure – he’ll never be able to sit still.
“If I could and the voters would have me, I would love to retire from here and continue to make those changes,” he said. “It really is about hoping that people remember that at the end of the day, we’ve provided a better quality of life for them.”
