Drive past the Garden City Center parking lot off Sockanosset Cross Road this summer and you will still see the gap where Applebee's used to be. The building is gone. The pad is empty. A little more than a mile away on New London Avenue, Chapel View is doing the opposite: cranes, new tenant signage, a steady rotation of ribbon cuttings. For a long time these two shopping centers functioned as roughly the same errand, a few minutes apart, more or less interchangeable depending on which parking lot had a spot open. That is no longer true, and the reason traces back to one fire, one landlord's decision, and a lot of restaurant real estate that had been sitting empty far longer than most people realized.
The Fire That Started the Split
On October 16, 2024, a fire broke out at the Applebee's inside Garden City Center. Investigators later ruled it accidental: a worker from a cleaning company was wiping down the hood system, disconnected the grill from the gas line, and the leak caused the blaze. Nobody was hurt, since the restaurant was closed at the time, but the damage was severe enough that the building was later demolished entirely.
The location mattered beyond the loss of a familiar dinner spot. Eleanor Clancy, market president for the franchise group that runs Applebee's across New England, called it the oldest Applebee's in the region, a detail that made the site more than just another vacant retail box. When the company decided how to bring the restaurant back, it did not rebuild on the same footprint. It moved.
Why Applebee's Chose Chapel View Instead of Rebuilding
Applebee's new home is a 5,800 square foot space at Chapel View, built into what used to be Orangetheory Fitness, a Hair Cuttery, and a Warhammer store. The location held its grand opening on April 20, 2026, with a ribbon cutting and new hires on hand. It is a mile from where the original stood, and it is on land controlled by a different developer entirely: Carpionato Group, which has spent the past two years turning Chapel View into what its leadership describes as a "Live-Work-Play" destination.
That framing is not just marketing language. Carpionato's president, Kelly Coates, has said the company's goal is to keep elevating the experience for residents, visitors, and tenants at the property, and Applebee's relocation fits neatly into a pattern the developer had already set in motion before the fire ever happened. Garden City lost its anchor. Chapel View gained one it did not have to build from scratch, because the tenant, the brand recognition, and the customer base were already established a short drive away.
The Neighbor That Got Hit Too
The Applebee's fire did not stop at one storefront. Bistro 22, next door at Garden City, sustained heavy enough damage from the same blaze that it closed for good. Its space sat empty for more than a year before Lanner Noodles was announced in January 2026 as the replacement. The Boston-based bone broth and handcrafted noodle bar is slated to move in next to Chaska in early 2027, its third location and its first outside the Boston area.
So the fire effectively cleared two storefronts at once, and the two replacements tell different stories. Applebee's left the neighborhood entirely, choosing a competitor's shopping center over rebuilding on familiar ground. Lanner Noodles is filling in behind it more than two years after the damage occurred, on a timeline that has nothing to do with urgency and everything to do with how long specialty tenants take to sign a lease and build out a kitchen.
Garden City's Other Long Vacancies Are Finally Filling In
Not every change at Garden City traces back to the fire. Some of it is just old vacancies finally getting resolved. Anna's Taqueria opened its first Rhode Island location on February 24, 2026, moving into the former Boston Market space at 185 Sockanosset Cross Road, a spot that had sat empty since the summer of 2023. The Cranston store is the Boston-based chain's 13th location and its first outside Massachusetts, built out with over 3,000 square feet of dining space and seating for around 42 guests. On opening day, the restaurant sold its super burritos at the chain's original 1995 price of $3.50 each, a nod to its founding rather than a reflection of what it costs on a normal Tuesday.
Sally's Apizza is expected to open sometime later this year in the space that used to house Anthony's Coal Fired Pizza. A fourth addition, PopUp Bagels, has been confirmed for Garden City as well, though no opening date has been set. Between Anna's, Sally's, PopUp Bagels, and Lanner Noodles, Garden City is on track to add four new restaurants across roughly two years, and only one of them exists because of the fire. The other three are simply national and regional chains finally claiming space that had gone dark years earlier.
Chapel View's Bigger Build-Out
Chapel View was not waiting on a fire to reshape itself. The property had already replaced the longtime Chapel Grille with Circe Prime, a higher-end steakhouse, in the spring of 2025, and added Rhode Island's third Crumbl location around the same time. By November 2025, Carpionato had announced four more additions on top of the Applebee's relocation: CAVA, Nothing Bundt Cakes, Ugly Dumpling, and Wonder.
CAVA opened January 30, 2026, at 2 Chapel View Boulevard, becoming the Mediterranean fast-casual chain's third Rhode Island location after Smithfield and Warwick. Wonder followed that spring, opening around April 20, 2026, as a food hall built around more than 20 restaurant concepts under one roof, including Limesalt for build-your-own burritos, Alonza Pizza, and a steak concept tied to celebrity chef Bobby Flay. It is Wonder's second Rhode Island location, after East Providence. Nothing Bundt Cakes and Ugly Dumpling, a Shanghai street food concept that would be its first Rhode Island location, were still finalizing timelines as of the most recent updates from Carpionato.
Add it up and Chapel View has brought in or announced roughly seven new dining concepts in under two years, nearly double what Garden City is adding over a similar stretch, and it did so as a deliberate strategy rather than as damage repair.
Two Shopping Centers, Two Different Nights
Here is the part that actually changes how you might use these two places. Garden City's new additions are almost entirely counter-service and grab-and-go: tacos, apizza by the slice, bagels, a noodle bar. It is becoming the errand-run version of dinner, the place you stop on the way home rather than the place you plan an evening around. Chapel View's additions lean the other direction: a steakhouse, a national bakery chain, a Mediterranean bowl concept with actual seating, and a food hall built for browsing rather than grabbing and going. It reads more like a destination than a stop.
Neither center set out to specialize this way on purpose. Garden City is filling in gaps, some created by fire and some just left over from chains that folded years ago. Chapel View is executing a broader plan under one developer with a consistent vision for what the property should feel like. But the effect for anyone who lives nearby is the same: these two shopping centers, a mile apart on the same stretch of road, are starting to serve two different kinds of evenings. Knowing which one to head toward depends less on which parking lot looks less crowded and more on whether you are picking something up or making a night of it.
If you are the kind of Cranston resident who tracks this sort of thing, you already noticed the demolished Applebee's pad and the new construction signs a mile away. Now you know why they are connected.
If you are thinking further down the road about a home near this corridor, whether that means Garden City's walkable errand loop or the newer build-out around Chapel View, Dave Hackett knows this stretch of Cranston as well as anyone selling real estate here. Let's Talk About Your Next Move.
