Work continues on the Fidelity Investments campus in Smithfield. Fidelity is adding 500 jobs there, starting in 2010.

The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

SMITHFIELD –– Owners of businesses located near the Fidelity campus in Smithfield welcomed news that Fidelity Investments planned to add 500 jobs in the area. The prospect of increased traffic on Route 7 appeared to bother them not a bit.

“The more the merrier as far as we’re concerned,” said Jerry Blau, director of operations for Coppage Management, which owns a Dunkin’ Donuts near Fidelity’s Smithfield facility, and another in Lincoln.

Fidelity announced Thursday that it plans to increase employment in Smithfield from the current 2,300 to 2,800 in the first quarter of 2010. The move is part of an internal reshuffling of staff among Fidelity’s four New England locations, two of them in Massachusetts, one in New Hampshire, and one in Smithfield. “Whenever they come, we’ll be ready for them. The coffee’s on,” Blau said.

Bill Gowen, owner of Effin’s Last Resort at 325 Farnum Pike, said his restaurant gets a lot of business from Fidelity employees. “We’re very pleased about this. We get a ton of Fidelity people who come in after work,” he said. “They’re excellent customers, a first-class group of people. They’re our target crowd,” he said.

Effin’s is an expansive restaurant and bar with an outdoor pool in the back, a volleyball court, tiki bar and a tent for outdoor parties. There’s also a private room that Fidelity staffers occasionally book for functions. Gowen said his business has been badly hurt by the cool, rainy weather: “It’s terrible, trust me, it’s terrible,” he said. So the news that Fidelity would be adding 500 jobs in Smithfield was very welcome. Gowen said he knows 500 more customers will not suddenly arrive at his door, but added workers in the area should mean “an incremental increase” in his business.

Ed Kilbane, general manager of the Comfort Suites hotel at 1010 Douglas Pike, said his hotel caters to corporate clients who have built in the Smithfield area, among them Fidelity, Navigant, Amica and Citizens Bank, as well as nearby Bryant University. Kilbane said Comfort Suites’ proximity to the Fidelity campus is one of the reasons the hotel was built in 2000.

“Any customer is a good customer. . . we would like to see more expansion in the area,” said Kilbane, who said Comfort Suites, like hotels across the country, has felt the impact of the economic downturn.

So has Fidelity, and the investment firm underwent two rounds of layoffs in the past eight months, shedding 1,700 positions in February and 1,300 last November. When it announced the job cuts, the company declined to provide the specifics of how many jobs were lost from Smithfield.

Denis Thibeault, co-owner of d. carlo Trattoria at 970 Douglas Pike, said that a few months ago his restaurant was hosting farewell parties for Fidelity employees who had lost jobs.

The news that 500 jobs are coming to Smithfield, he said, is far more welcome. Thibeault said the restaurant does a significant lunch and after-work business with Fidelity employees, plus a number of private parties. “We need it. This is not a big residential area. So it’s great to have them here, especially during the day,” he said.

Fidelity employees transferred to Smithfield will need to live somewhere, as well as eat. “It certainly is not going to hurt us,” said Karl Martone, president-elect of the Rhode Island Association of Realtors, on the possibility that Fidelity workers will move to northern Rhode Island. But Martone cautioned that some employees coming from Massachusetts will stay put rather than uproot their families.

Martone said the real-estate market in Rhode Island is becoming “really quite peppy” as consumer confidence rises and buyers take advantage of a first-time homebuyer credit. Fidelity employees who chose to buy homes in Rhode Island, he said, will help “clean up the [housing] inventory.”

Joyce Murray, bartender and manager at Parente’s Restaurant, 1114 Douglas Pike, said she’s been working there for 26 years. She pointed out that Parente’s is the first restaurant people come to on the Pike when they leave Fidelity. “I saw the news [of additional jobs] in the paper and I said, ‘Oh, good!’ ” Murray said.

Murray, whose sister is one of the restaurant’s owners, said the area has changed a great deal in the past 26 years, as corporations have built in the area and Bryant University has expanded. “When we moved here, 26 years ago, I said to my sister, ‘What are we doing up here in the woods?’ It’s been built up so much around here in the last 26 years. It’s unbelievable.”

With staff reports from Paul Grimaldi.

asmith@projo.com