Framing out part of the roof area on the Narragansett Pier project yesterday is Chris Moulton, left, and Kevin Johnson, from C. Moulton Construction, Coventry.

The Providence Journal / BOB BREIDenbach

A grocery market will be the “heart” of the Narragansett Pier area redevelopment project, but there will also be an upscale restaurant and a liquor store. Below, Gilbane Development Co. is in charge of the construction and is shooting for a mid-May opening.

Top, architectural rendition; below, The Providence Journal / BOB BREIDENBACH

NARRAGANSETT — The outside will be reminiscent of Narragansett’s glory days, when Queen Anne Victorians were the rage and the Pier area was a summer playground.

The inside will have the goods of a modern grocery store: produce, fresh meats, seafood, ready-to-eat meals, frozen foods and all the usual boxed and canned foods, as well as a café.

If all goes according to plan, the new market will be open in six months, giving Narragansett’s Pier area a long-needed anchor. Or, as Belmont Market President Jack Siravo calls it, a heart.

“I’ve heard so many people say for so long they really wanted to have a market in Narragansett, so I’m willing to try,” he said. “I think that the people of Narragansett will shop there.”

Siravo, who already runs a Belmont Market in Wakefield, and Gilbane Development Co., which owns the property, are working together to make the new market a reality.

Gilbane is renovating and adding 3,000 square feet to a building that served as a market until Gilbane – according to the previous tenant – nearly tripled the rent.

Siravo is planning a variety of offerings – the café, take-out ice cream, lots of produce and ready-to-eat foods – that should make this grocery experience more than just a monotonous walk up and down look-alike aisles.

Ordinarily, such an undertaking could take 18 months. But Siravo, as promised this past spring, is pushing to open by mid-May.

The significance of the opening date is huge in Narragansett, where the Pier area has long been held up as the classic example of a big development gone bad. The urban redevelopment project that created the present-day Pier Marketplace was supposed to revive the town’s downtown, creating an upscale commercial complement to the picturesque town beach just across the street. Instead, the town allowed Gilbane – the only company to bid on the project – to emphasize residential development, which resulted in a wall of apartments just opposite the beach.

There was no bigger issue in 2005 and 2006, as Gilbane sought permission to renovate and upgrade the apartments and the town pushed for some of the commercial vitality it had wanted from the start.

Ultimately, the Town Council approved a plan that allows Gilbane to renovate its 88 apartments, which will be transformed into condominiums, said Gilbane spokesman Wes Cotter. The company also has permission to build another 16 units, which were postponed under the original project because the proposed site was occupied by a sewer treatment plant, Cotter said.

On the commercial side, Gilbane is expanding the market building, which will also house a separate liquor store, and has Belmont as a tenant. Gilbane has also committed to building an upscale restaurant and, long term, the company is obligated to prepare plans for a road through the Pier area that will provide more commercial space.

Reaction in town has been something along the lines of well, it’s not what we want, but it’s an improvement.

Jim Cavanaugh, who led a group that wanted Gilbane to remove some of the apartments, described a chance encounter with out-of-town visitors when asked his thoughts on the outcome.

“I come out of the Town Hall, walking towards my car, and a car stopped with two elderly ladies, and they said ‘Can you tell me where the downtown is?’ Downtown for Narragansett. Whoo!” he said. “And I said ‘It was destroyed 40 years ago, with as much force as if the Luftwaffe destroyed it.’ But I said, ‘If you want to follow me, I’ll show you where it is.’ ”

Cavanaugh said he led them over the Pier Marketplace, and where the ladies told him, “We were down at the beach and we didn’t see these shops.”

He replied, “Exactly.”

But Cavanaugh conceded that the new Pier area plan is a step in the right direction.

“I’m practical,” he said. “You can’t wave magic wands and all that, and I’m going to give Gilbane the benefit that he’s going to do the right things. Now it won’t bring back the glory days, but perhaps something better than we have now.”

Cotter said Gilbane is committed to the commercial improvements sought by the town. The company is spending $675,000 to renovate and enlarge the market, he said. And the company will start building the restaurant in the spring, with or without a tenant, he said.

Michael DeLuca, the town’s community development director, said the market is the key to the other commercial plans that will follow.

“There was a real response, a real hue and cry when they closed the store originally,” he said. “So to rejuvenate the site, to bring in a grocery store with a great reputation and to get retail groceries back in the Pier I think is a fine addition … I would put the market as the cornerstone of the whole thing.”

Siravo said he believes the combination of the market and the liquor store, with their Victorian façade that recalls the Pier’s past, will be a good first step.

In January, while Gilbane is still working on the building, Siravo will start working on the interior, intent on meeting his self-imposed mid-May deadline.

“For us to open in May is a task of Herculean proportions,” he said, “but I feel very confident.”