Although his College Hill Bookstore is just across the street from the much larger Brown University Bookstore, owner Ken Dulgarian says he doesn't check out their stock to see what they're up to.
He mentions, in passing and with just the hint of a sigh, that the Brown Bookstore has tax-free status. "Life is filled with inequities. You learn to live with them. You acclimate and you move on. That's what we do."
But Laura Freid, executive vice president for public affairs and university relations at Brown, says the Brown Bookstore does indeed pay taxes -- sales tax revenue to the state and a property tax to the City of Providence for the commercial part of the building which, she says, "I think will be $34,000 next year."
The Brown Bookstore has been a fixture on Thayer Street since 1970, and Freid views it and the College Hill as friendly competitors that are facing the superstores.
"Both of them are very important properties on Thayer Street," she says, adding that the Brown Bookstore differs in two major ways from College Hill: It orders books keyed to courses taught at the university, and it carries retail merchandise that's specific to Brown, such as sweatshirts, caps and T-shirts with the Brown logo.
Like Field, Eric Bilodeau, who manages Providence's Cable Car Cinema and Cafe, calls Dulgarian a "friendly competitor." Many Cable Car films have had their first local runs at the Avon.
Dulgarian says he doesn't look upon the Cable Car, nor the recently refurbished Castle Cinema, which has begun showing independent and foreign films on its three screens -- plus food service and a full bar -- as "competition. Their venues are a little different. I don't think food is our market. We're more of an old, traditional movie theater."
In fact, Dulgarian had to approve the $250,000 loan his Economic Development Corp. handed to the Castle's new owners for their renovations. This, maintains Dulgarian, "would only have been a conflict of interest if I had not been in favor of it."
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