BY VINAYA SAKSENA

CENTRAL FALLS — Mayor Charles Moreau and other city officials were on hand for a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday, commemorating the opening of a new CVS store that the mayor said he had been looking forward to for some time.

The store’s opening represents the culmination of efforts by a developer and city officials to bring the Woonsocket-based pharmaceutical chain’s newest store to Central Falls. On Friday, city and company officials said they were pleased to see the effort come to fruition, with Moreau calling it a major improvement, visually and otherwise, over the long-defunct train depot property that had been sitting dormant there.
“The (site) was just a blighted property, and was a gateway into the city,” Moreau said. “I just felt that we needed to do something about it.”
When the idea was initially presented to the city, Moreau said, the developer had a backup plan, but had pretty much settled on CVS as the company to bring in. The mayor said having a strong, established company like CVS come into the location fit in with his hope to revitalize the property and the surrounding neighborhood. For this reason, he said, a “fast track” permitting procedure was initiated, in which representatives from all of the affected city departments met with the developer simultaneously to discuss the plan, rather than having the applicant meet separately with each regulatory body.
The matter was complicated by the property’s location on the border with Pawtucket. In the end, however, Moreau said he thought the effort was worthwhile.
It’s brought jobs to the city. It’s bringing approximately $100,000 a year in tax revenue to the city.”
CVS District Manager Diane Boswell said that city officials had been pleasant to deal with throughout. And despite the presence of a pre-existing CVS location down the road in neighboring Cumberland, she said the new store would add something unique. For one thing, she pointed out that the store would carry Goya foods and other products geared toward the large local Hispanic community.
“We’ve got locations a mile and a half in a couple of directions,” Boswell said. “But I think this location is going to do very well. It brings a lot of convenience.”
Additionally, Boswell said this would be the only 24-hour CVS facility in the area. She pointed out that the company had between 12 and 15 24-hour stores in the state, out of approximately 56 stores total.
Boswell also said that the company intended to hire local residents as much as possible. She pointed out that the new store’s manager, Tim McGloin, was a longtime Central Falls resident. Moreau said he had just found out that McGloin would be the store’s manager, and said he was pleasantly surprised, as the two of them had grown up together in the city, playing football for the Central Falls Lions alongside the city’s police chief, Col. Joseph Moran.
McGloin, a 12-year CVS employee, said he had managed stores in Providence, Pawtucket and Florida. He pointed out that the new store followed the company’s practice of attempting to make their buildings conform to and blend in with the existing landscape.
“The layout’s a little bit different,” he said. “(But) it’s mostly in line with the way our newer stores are.”
Boswell said the store had been open before the ribbon cutting, and that the opening celebration would continue into the weekend. She said the store planned to offer free blood pressure, glucose and cholesterol screenings over the weekend.