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Training Center Opens at Mall

Posted on: Wednesday, 11 January 2006, 12:00 CST

By Paul Grimaldi, The Providence Journal, R.I.

Jan. 11--PROVIDENCE -- A retail job-training center was reborn at Providence Place mall yesterday as city and state officials joined with business executives to open the Providence Skills Center.

The center is part of a program created by the National Retail Federation's foundation and is the first of its kind in New England. There are 15 other skills centers around the country.

Operating in shopping centers, the centers help people land jobs with retail and service-sector companies. There are classes on computers, workshops on customer service, retail management, sales, career counseling, English as a second language and other academic offerings. Trainees earn certification that the program's backers say helps land jobs.

The first one opened near Philadelphia in 1997.

The skills centers are intended "to put a whole new slant on the retail industry and to change the image of retail," said Kathy Mannes, of the National Retail Federation. "We see this as a hub that will emanate out of Providence."

Mannes made her remarks to a small audience packed into a classroom in the mall's basement.

The Providence center is a joint effort of the National Retail Federation, the Rhode Island Retail Federation, the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce, Comprehensive Community Action Program, Workforce Solutions of Providence/Cranston and the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation.

The center differs from one run previously in the mall, part of the city's School Department, which opened the Providence Place Academy with fanfare in fall 1999.

The academy was designed to become the nation's first school-to-career diploma program in a shopping mall. Classes were to be held in a suite of rooms built for the program in the mall's basement.

The idea was to give Providence high school students hands-on experience that they couldn't receive in the classroom.

Conceived by former Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr., the program was a partnership between the mall developer, the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce, Johnson & Wales University, the Community College of Rhode Island and the School Department.

While a store internship program worked well, the academic program never took root at the mall. Students made do with a series of part-time instructors and temporary locations on the Johnson & Wales campus and the John Fogarty Memorial Building and at Federal Hill House. Some classes were eventually held in the mall.

A mall kiosk that students ran never generated a profit.

The academy fell casualty to tight budgets in 2003. The School Board suspended enrollment and folded the school's retail and marketing courses into the school-to-career arm of Central High School.

A total of 36 students graduated from the academy in 2003 and 2004, and its 90 remaining students were moved to the new Health, Science and Technology Academy on Thurbers Avenue.

The new center will be open to Providence students as well as people outside the school system, including high school graduates and retail workers.

Companies can tailor classes to their operations. CVS Corp., the Woonsocket-based drugstore chain, will build a scaled-down pharmacy counter in the center to train technicians who work alongside pharmacists.

Other retailers are expected to place their trainees there as well, said Robert L. Ricci, administrator of Workforce Solutions.

Ricci lobbied state leaders and business executives to rebuild the retail program at the mall, which will be financed with grants from the NRF, the Rhode Island Department of Education and other sources. The center has applied for nonprofit status, which will give it access to money unavailable to the city's former retail program, Ricci said.

This month, 50 students will move from the Comprehensive Community Action Program, Ricci said, with 150 moving through the program by June.

"We're going to ramp up slowly," he said.

Ricci foresees 400 to 500 students a year graduating from the certification program.

Gary Littlefield, of the Community Action Program, will manage the skills center. "I just can't wait to get this thing going," he said.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Providence Journal, R.I.

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CVS,

Source: Providence Journal

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