[mdovell]

RI is abuzz with the talks that Hasbro might not be leaving just pawtucket but also RI itself. 1,000 jobs and diversity of an industry I think is a good thing.

Could it fit in Hartford?

[JayCT]

You never know but given major corporation's desire to be in very large cities, it is questionable. Maybe Stamford. Hopefully Lamont is on this and putting together a good package of enticements. I am sure other states/cities are as well.

This would be another significant blow to Pawtucket though. First Memorial Hospital closed and then the Pawtucket Red Socks decide to move to Worcester. Now this. Sad, very sad.

I also frequent the Rhode Island forum and there is no discussion of this. There have been discussions of a proposal to build a massive tower on land abandoned by the relocation of I-195 at the edge of downtown. Some are for it, some say it is out of scale for the area and do not want it. There has also been discussions of the long vacant "Superman" building downtown which is literally falling apart after years of neglect; discussion of the proposed demolition of a historic mansion on Blackstone Boulevard to make way for a subdivision; and the loss of Nordstrom's at the Providence Place mall but nothing on this. It has been talked about in the local media. It seems the state is working to keep Hasbro but not necessarily in Pawtucket. Jay

https://www.providencejournal.com/ne...g-hasbro-in-ri

[WILWRadio]

Coleco Industries was HQ'd in West Hartford until the 1980's. They also produced toys such as the old table hockey games that many of us used as kids. Would be nice to see another major toy manufacturer back in the state.

[Stylo]

Originally Posted by wilwradio

coleco industries was hq'd in west hartford until the 1980's. They also produced toys such as the old table hockey games that many of us used as kids. Would be nice to see another major toy manufacturer back in the state.

Lego?

[WILWRadio]

Originally Posted by Stylo

Lego?

No. Lego is made by a Danish company. They had a plant in Enfield I think but are not HQ'd here like Coleco was. Coleco actually was a leather company when it was first founded in the 1930's before they started to expand their lines. It's been a long time now and the only toy I clearly recall owning by Coleco was a couple of those portable hockey tables. But I know they made other toys as well but I just don't recall what they were now.

[robr2]

LEGO has a distribution center in Enfield - manufacturing is done in Denmark, Hungary, Mexico, Czech Republic, and China.

[JayCT]

Originally Posted by robr2

LEGO has a distribution center in Enfield - manufacturing is done in Denmark, Hungary, Mexico, Czech Republic, and China.

Lego's North American Headquarters are in Enfield. Have been since 1996, maybe longer. Jay

https://www.jcj.com/project/lego-nor...-headquarters/

[JayCT]

Originally Posted by WILWRadio

Coleco Industries was HQ'd in West Hartford until the 1980's. They also produced toys such as the old table hockey games that many of us used as kids. Would be nice to see another major toy manufacturer back in the state.

That is true. They went under because of their failure at personal computers. Invested too much in trying to enter the market and its failure brought down the whole company. I know Connecticut has a lot of independent toy designers that came out of Coleco. Its a niche industry with many based here in the Hartford area. Wonder if that will make a difference. Jay

[MMS02760]

There is no way Hasbro moves to Hartford.

Hasbro wants a central corporate campus that can house all its employees in a single facility. It's current Pawtucket HQ cannot accommodate everyone and that is why there is talk about a move. The company has it longtime corporate office on Rte 1A in an old mill complex in Pawtucket. It has a 2nd facility 1 mile further south of that in East Providence right on the line with Pawtucket. More recently, it has added a 3rd office in downtown Providence right across from the Dunkin Donuts Center arena.

The company is evaluating its situation and as part of that is also exploring many options. Moving out of state is not totally off the table. Hasbro itself has been undergoing some recent changes. The involvement of the founding Hassenfeld family (Has Brothers) has been diminishing. The company had long been run by family and inside long tenured people. Its current CEO Goldner has broken the old mold coming from outside Hasbro. The company is experiencing lower sales as a result of the Toys R Us closing and is trying to adapt to a changing toy buying market. It recently had a sizeable employment reduction in RI but has declined to make public the number of those laid off. The company in its beginning was mostly centered on traditional toys - Mr Potato Head, Play Dough, and GI Joe were among its best selling lines. It later got more into board games buying both the MA based Parker Brothers and Milton-Bradley. It unlike many other toy companies never majorly focused on the computer based and gaming toys. In more recent years, the company has gotten very involved with the entertainment industry with film licensing merchandise and even produced its own tv series and films based on its toys (notably Transformers and GI Joe).

I would think the best odds are that the company stays within driving distance of its current location. With the trend of many corporations moving their facilities to urban centers, there is much speculation that it might move all operations to nearby downtown Providence. They already have a building there and it is would be less than 5 miles from their Pawtucket and E Providence offices thus having a minimal impact on their present employees. A close by suburban corporate campus outside Providence might also be a possibility and this could mean locations in either RI or MA (offices in Pawtucket and E Providence are less than a mile from MA border). Several companies (Citizens Bank/Fidelity Investments/FM Global Insurance/Amica Insurance/CVS) in the last two decades have built such campuses near RI's Route 295 belt. There are supposedly also discussions within Hasbro that if it were to relocate, the time might actually be right for a radical change to move it close to the entertainment industry hubs (direction of much of its emerging business focus) such as LA or even NYC.

The mayor of Pawtucket has been sounding the alarm on a possible Hasbro move and imploring state leaders to get involved now before it is too late. State leaders have come out that they want to keep the company in RI but have not necessarily tied this to staying in Pawtucket. Pawtucket is only 9 square miles and is nearly entirely all built out. There is little vacant land in the city to build what Hasbro may desire at one site.

A move outside the city would be another big blow as noted in an above post. Memorial Hospital (located just a few blocks down the street from the soon to be vacant Paw Sox home of McCoy Stadium) which at the time one of the oldest and largest hospitals in the state with a near 300 bed capacity, abruptly closed last January. It was owned by Care New England which also owned and operated several other RI hospitals. As an urban hospital, Memorial was always struggling with its finances. Care New England exacerbated this by off loading many procedures done there to its other RI hospitals. Admittals not surprisingly dropped given patients were being referred elsewhere. Care New England (itself up for sale at the time) then used dropping patient levels as justification to close the facility and concentrate on its other units. The state did little to stop its closing and actually allowed it to be fast tracked and shut down in just a few months despite the ample evidence the owner deliberately made a business decision to essentially and deliberately scuttle the hospital and hasten its financial woes. This was a stark contrast to the situation with the possible closing of Landmark Hospital in Woonsocket just a few years earlier. The state very much got involved and prevented its closing citing the need for a facility in that part of the state and forced it to stay open until a new buyer could be found. With Pawtucket basically being an extension of Providence with many other local hospitals nearby, the state took a very hands off approach to Memorial's closing.

Pawtucket is an old mill town that was once very prosperous. It has struggled in recent decades just as other similar cities and towns across New England. It unfortunately has not really gotten much help from the state of RI to improve its situation (nearly everything in RI is focused on Providence with other communities's needs mostly neglected). The Paw Sox were lost because state leaders failed to get together on the same page and hammer out a deal for a downtown Pawtucket stadium in a timely manner. The specter of the state's idiotic investment/loss in Curt Schilling's failed video game company poisoned the appetite for substantial public funding support. This gave the City of Worcester and state of MA ample time to develop a much more attractive offer (some 100M+ in public funds versus the 46M offered by Pawtucket and RI) to lure the team away from its nearly 50 year home in the much larger metro Providence region. State leaders also in no way helped try to keep Memorial open and actually fast tracked approval for its closing. Now the city appears to be getting little help from the state in trying to keep Hasbro within its borders. It is worth noting that the governor, Senate President, and Speaker of the RI House recently met to discuss a possible Hasbro move and plan a strategy to keep them local. It should be noted that they did not invite the mayor of Pawtucket to be a part of this meeting.

Pawtucket is at a disadvantage as it does not have much of a presence in many of this region's larger employment sectors such as education (no colleges in its city limits), medical (hospital now closed), government (no significant state or federal offices or facilities in the city), tech/bio-tech, and tourism. Its longtime dependence on manufacturing hurts it as this industry continues to diminish across New England.

Pawtucket, despite these potentially big setbacks, has had some successes. The city is right on the state border sandwiched between Providence and Attleboro. Routes 95 and 1/1A along with the Amtrak/MBTA Commuter rail run right through the city making it very accessible. There has been an MBTA Commuter Rail station tens of feet from its border in S Attleboro for the last three decades. The MBTA train yard for the Providence commuter line where the trains are kept overnight has been in the city near the Providence border along Route 95 for the last 20 years. Groundbreaking has finally just taken place for the new long talked about MBTA station and RIPTA bus inter-modal facility in downtown Pawtucket which should be up and running within the next two years. This will help be a big boost to public transit in the city offering travel options not just toward Boston but south as well to RI stations in Providence, Warwick/TF Green, and Wickford. Many of its old mills have been converted to loft style apartments and condos and the city has become a home to a large number of artists. It has become a magnet for beer brewing with three different brewing facilities. Chief among these is the Guild, a cooperative brewery that brews several regional labels (Narragansett/Night Shift/Farmer Willies/Wash Ashore/Newburyport/Devils Purse/Great North/Monopolio) and houses the corporate HQ of Narragansett.



The Guild
http://theguildri.com/

Pawtucket MBTA Commuter Rail Station


Conant Thread District
https://www.conantthread.com/

[mdovell]

Well Coleco stood for Connecticut Leather Company. They were the first company to license disney for leather goods. They made a ton of money from that but also made crappy kid pools. In retrospect Colecovision was interesting. The Adam in most respects laid the groundwork for Nintendo. If you look at the original ideas for the NES in Japan in '83 and what was from Coleco it was heavily influenced to say the least. There's some interesting stories about the licensing of Donkey Kong