Joe Medeiros, of Providence, works on the elaborate music system inside the restaurant in the former Hope Webbing mill complex in Pawtucket.

The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer Bob Thayer

PAWTUCKET — It wasn’t too long ago that Hope Webbing was a ghost town. The sprawling mill complex a couple of blocks north of Providence had been idle for more than a decade. In 2004, the old bleachery and dye building on Esten Avenue burned to the ground.

Yesterday, the once-deserted complex was teeming with people. In the big vacant lot where the bleachery and dye building used to be, blacktop was being laid for a 400-car parking lot.

In the front part of the complex, along Main Street, construction workers were putting the finishing touches on the new home of The Blackstone, the trendy bar and restaurant that recently moved back to Pawtucket from Cumberland’s Mendon Road.

Hope Webbing is being reborn as Hope Artiste Village, the hip urban community that the developers hope will take shape in the apartments, stores and light manufacturing spaces that are being carved out of the former mill complex.

From 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. tomorrow, two years after Urban Smart Growth announced the $30-million project, the developers will be showing people around.

“Basically, we’re going to have people giving tours of the building,” said Ron L. Wierks, director of operations for Urban Smart Growth. “They’re going to be able to go through the restaurant, they’re going to be able to go down and see some of the light manufacturing…. We’re going to have five bands.”

The music will be free, and so will the food and drink, Wierks said. A bus will shuttle people back and forth from the parking lot, on the west side of the 13-acre mill complex, to the front of the complex, with its bar and restaurant, spaces for light manufacturing, and model apartments and stores.

Hope Artiste Village is between 30 percent and 35 percent complete, Wierks said. The light manufacturing spaces are already 70 percent occupied, with woodworkers, sculptors, a bakery and coffee-roasting company among the tenants. The stores are about 60 percent finished, the apartments are about 70 percent complete, he said.

Hope Artiste Village is one of five mill conversion projects by Urban Smart Growth that are either under way in Rhode Island, or in the planning stages.

Urban Smart Growth does construction and property management for Lance J. Robbins, the Los Angeles lawyer who lined up the investors who bought Hope Webbing, the former U.S. Rubber Co. complex near Eagle Square in Providence, the former Greystone Mill in North Providence, and a warehouse on Rand Street.

The properties are being converted into places to live and work, with 156 apartments going into the U.S. Rubber Co. complex and 150 going into the Greystone Mill.

The plans for Hope Artiste Village call for it to become a self-contained community, with places to live and work as well as relax.

But Urban Smart Growth isn’t stopping there.

About a week ago, the company agreed to buy the former Paramount Card company building on Pine Street out of receivership, along with an adjoining building, Wierks said.

A mixed-use project similar to Hope Artiste Village is planned there. Wierks said the impetus is being provided by the city’s plans to restore commuter rail service to the Pawtucket-Central Falls train station, which is on Broad Street, about 200 yards away

jcastell@projo.com