The New Hope Diner Project

Apple Tree Diner WJAR 10 Coverage

2009-10-27T04:58:00.005-04:00

Students at Smithfield High School, Smithfield, RI. are excited about their upcoming diner restoration project. WJAR Channel 10 covered the move of the formerApple Tree/ Midway Diner. Click here for coverage.

Students have recipe to restore historic diner

2009-09-24T15:03:00.001-04:00

View Video Here: Students have recipe to restore historic diner

Smithfield students restore 1930s diner

2009-09-24T14:51:00.002-04:00

Smithfield students restore 1930s diner

45 students will work together on restoration

Published : Thursday, 17 Sep 2009, 12:45 AM EDT

Candace Hopkins
Reporting by: Danielle North

Smithfield, R.I. (WPRI) - High school students in one local district come together to restore a piece of history.

Students at Smithfield High School have decided to restore a 1930's diner as part of a new service project.

Officials from the American Diner Museum delivered the remnants of what once was Quincy's Midway Diner to school grounds on Wednesday to kick off the project.

45 students will work for two years to restore the property on campus.

Smithfield Teacher Jeff Macari says the project will involve many departments within the school. In addition to the restoration team students from the art, business, and consumer science departments will also play a role in the efforts.

School officials are working to secure grants and community donations to fund the project. An initial estimate shows the construction will cost at least 50,000 dollars.

Once completed the school plans to use the diner as a unique concession stand outside the football field.

Click here for the video

CN8 New Hope Diner Project Video

2009-05-15T23:22:00.000-04:00

Please watch the story of the New hope Diner Project from Comcast Cable.

Hickey's Diner 1954 Chevrolet COE has arrived.The restoration has began on the cabover and engine for the truck that will carry Hickey's Diner.

2009-03-18T00:02:00.001-04:00

COLETTA'S COLLISION CENTER will be assisting us with the restoration of our Chevrolet truck for Hickey's Diner. We will post photos as soon as they are available.

The restoration of the engine for our 1954 COE is almost complete..

Students at New England Tech inspect the engine that will go into

the COE.

Students at New England Tech in Warwick, RI. and Coletta's Garage will under take the restoration of our truck.

If you would like to offer assistance be it technical or financial with the restoration of our COE, please email the museum at HickeysDiner@AmericanDinerMuseum.org

We will be listing parts needs as we get further into the project..

Our 1954 Cheverolet COE for Hickey's Diner has arrived and restoration has begun...

Click here to see the information on the restoration of Hickey's Diner.

The New Hope Diner Project Receives its First Award!

2009-03-01T17:45:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to John Scott and the New Hope Diner Project for being the recipients for the New England Council on Crime and Delinquency's 2008 John R. Manson/Carl Robinson Award.

This award honors an individual who has truly made a significant contribution to the field of Criminal Justice within the New England area. The award is named for two outstanding New England professionals:

John R. Manson served the State of Connecticut as Commissioner of Corrections until his death in 1983. He had a long and distinguished career and was credited with initiating major reforms in the State’s prison system.

Carl Robinson was also a pioneer in prison reform in the State of Connecticut where he served as Warden of Somers State Prison. In 1982 he was honored by the A.C.A. as the “National Warden of the Year”.

New Hope Brand Coffee's Favorite Roaster May Also Be Our Favorite Barista!

2009-02-05T01:59:00.011-05:00

New Hope Brand Coffee's Favorite Roaster May Also Be Our Favorite Barista!

As you may know New Harvest Coffee Roasters is the roaster of our New Hope Coffee. Well one of our roasters is also one "HECK OF A BARISTA"!

Devlin Rice will be competing in the Specialty Coffee Association of America's Northeast Regional Barista Competition in Pittsburgh this week. He has been working tirelessly perfecting his techniques and hisfabulous specialty drink for the competition.

I was invited by Gerra Harrigan of New Harvest Coffee Roasters to sit on two of several his review panels with some of Rhode Island's most respected coffee, food,and pastry artisans (I have to admit I was a bit Star Struck). When I walked in for the first time and sat next to the owners of Coffee Exchange and Seven Stars Bakery I though I was in the wrong room!

One behalf of the New Hope Diner Project I want to congratulate Rik Kleinfeldt owner and Gerra Harrigan Director of Business Development of New Harvest Coffee Roasters...

But most of all we want to wish Devlin Rice the best of luck and we are all behind you.
FYI whenever you need someone to sample your creations just let me know. Here is the link to read the whole story: http://tinyurl.com/dflb35

New Hope Coffee Available for Holiday Giving.

2008-11-29T23:49:00.006-05:00

It's that time again!!!!! Please keep New Hope Coffee in mind for your holiday gift giving. We are taking orders now for your holiday gift giving. To place your order go to the American Diner Museum website (click on the New Hope Coffee link on the right to place your order) New Hope Brand Coffee comes in: New Hope Coffee Regular Ground and Regular Whole Bean $11.00 per pound or 2 pounds for $20.00 New Hope Coffee Decaffeinated Ground and Decaffeinated Whole Bean $12.00 per pound or 2 pounds for $22.00(Checks must be made payable to: American Diner Museum)

New Hope Coffee is a great gift idea because with each pound you buy you are giving multiple gifts. First, all profits from the sale of New Hope Coffee go directly back into the New Hope Diner Project to buy materials for our self-sustaining program that provides educational and vocational opportunities to the youth in the care of the Department of Children, Youth & Families, Division of Juvenile Correctional Services.

Second, New Hope Brand Coffee is Certified Fair Trade. Fair Trade Certification empowers farmers and farm workers to lift themselves out of poverty by investing in their farms and communities, protecting the environment, and developing the business skills necessary to compete in the global marketplace.

When you buy New Hope Brand Coffee for the coffee drinker on your shopping list you are also helping to provide for the coffee growers in third world countries a living wage and helping them develop a stronger economic structure in their country.

Third, New Hope Brand Coffee is locally roasted. New Harvest Coffee Roaster is our roaster located in Pawtucket, RI. and by supporting the New Hope Brand Coffee you are also supporting the local economy by supporting a socially conscious, small batch specialty coffee roaster here in Rhode Island.

Finally, New Hope Brand Coffee is always fresh. New Hope Brand Coffee is a perfect blend of bright lively Central American beans complemented with undertones of dark caramel and a dash of dark roast. There is a complex aroma of dried fruit and cinnamon, followed by a light-bodied brew that suggests sweet cider with a hint of citrus.

October is Fair Trade Month and New Hope Brand Coffee is Fair Trade Certified!

2008-09-30T02:29:00.007-04:00

The Month of October is Fair Trade Month and New Hope Brand Coffee is Fair Trade Certified!

Come Visit the New Hope Diner Project
41st Scituate Arts Festival
Columbus Day Weekend October 11-13, 2008
(In front of the Country Gardener ~ 617 W Greenville Rd ~ North Scituate, RI)

Please be sure to visit the New Hope Brand Coffee Booth at the 41st Annual Scituate Arts Festival and say hello. Admission is free and is open from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Last year was New Hope Coffee's first year at the Scituate Arts Festival and thanks to your support the New Hope Diner Project exceeded it sales goal selling 200 lbs of coffee. Come visit us again at our location next door to the North Scituate Baptist Church located at 619 West Greenville Road (also known as Route 116) in North Scituate, Rhode Island and help us exceed our goal again this year!

About New Hope Brand Coffee and the New Hope Diner Project
New Harvest Coffee Roasters (www.newharvestcoffee.com) in Pawtucket, RI helped us create New Hope Brand Coffee. New Hope Brand Coffee is a perfect blend of bright lively Central American beans complemented with undertones of dark caramel and a dash of dark roast. There is a complex aroma of dried fruit and cinnamon, followed by a light-bodied brew that suggests sweet cider with a hint of citrus. New Hope Brand Coffee is Certified Organic and Certified Fair Trade.

In 1872 Walter Scott first offered coffee from his lunch wagon to customers on the streets of Providence, Rhode Island. He unknowingly inspired the creation of an industry that would later become an American icon, the diner.

In the entrepreneurial spirit of Walter Scott, the Department of Children, Youth & Families, Division of Juvenile Correctional Services, Bryant University, the American Diner Museum, and Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse has been working with a disadvantaged youth population through the restoration of historic American Diners. This collaboration provides educational, vocational and employment opportunities to the youth in the care of the Department of Children, Youth & Families, Division of Juvenile Correctional Services. All proceeds from coffee sales go to the New Hope Diner Project to buy materials. The New Hope Diner Project is a self-sustaining program that was created to provide educational, vocational, and employment opportunities to the youth in the care of the Department of Children, Youth & Families Division of Juvenile Correctional Services. On Sunday October 12th meet Miss Rhode Island America, Francesca Simone at our New Hope Coffee booth from 11:00AM to 1:ooPM.

The Fair Trade Certified* label guarantees consumers that strict economic, social and environmental criteria were met in the production and trade of an agricultural product. Fair Trade Certification is currently available in the U.S. for coffee, tea and herbs, cocoa and chocolate, fresh fruit, flowers, sugar, rice, and vanilla. TransFair USA licenses companies to display the Fair Trade Certified label on products that meet strict international Fair Trade standards.Fair Trade Certification empowers farmers and farm workers to lift themselves out of poverty by investing in their farms and communities, protecting the environment, and developing the business skills necessary to compete in the global marketplace. Fair Trade principles include:

1. Fair prices: Democratically organized farmer groups receive a guaranteed minimum floor price and an additional premium for certified organic products. Farmer organizations are also eligible for pre-harvest credit.

2. Fair labor conditions: Workers on Fair Trade farms enjoy freedom of association, safe working conditions, and living wages. Forced child labor is strictly prohibited. Direct trade: With Fair Trade, importers purchase from Fair Trade producer groups as directly as possible, eliminating unnecessary middlemen and empowering farmers to develop the business capacity necessary to compete in the global marketplace.

3. Democratic and transparent organizations: Fair Trade farmers and farm workers decide democratically how to invest Fair Trade revenues. Community development: Fair Trade farmers and farm workers invest Fair Trade premiums in social and business development projects like scholarship programs, quality improvement trainings, and organic certification. 4. Environmental sustainability: Harmful agrochemicals and GMOs are strictly prohibited in favor of environmentally sustainable farming methods that protect farmers' health and preserve valuable ecosystems for future generations.

The Road to Recovery

2008-09-04T02:53:00.001-04:00

Traditional Building Magazine

The Road to Recovery

By Eve M. Kahn
Abandoned portable buildings in desperate shape are being hauled to the doorsteps of teenagers in dire need of job experience and marketable skills. While rebuilding the humble structures, the kids are not only learning sound construction practices but also helping to sell products that fund the state-run training program itself. In this win-win-win situation, the portable buildings and the teens will leave the property better equipped to thrive in the mainstream, while costing the taxpayer nothing.
The program is based at the Rhode Island Training School, a juvenile corrections facility in Cranston, RI, just south of Providence. It holds about 100 boys and a dozen girls, ages 13 to 20, most of whom have committed nonviolent crimes and spend six- to nine-month stints there. The low brick complex would look like any other mid-20th-century school, if not for the high perimeter fence. The kids spend a day or so a week in a ground-floor carpentry classroom that opens onto a yard, where a decrepit diner is perched on wooden blocks.
At the moment, the overhaul of Hickey’s diner, a 1947 relic from Taunton, MA, is underway. Supervised by Daniel Zilka, head of the American Diner Museum, and RITS vocational-tech instructors, the residents have already sandblasted and hot-riveted steel undercarriage sections and ripped out rotted lath and cabinetry while carefully labeling salvageable parts for eventual reassembly. In phases through the end of this year, they’ll mill and drill new beams and floorboards, cut new glazing for the slit or porthole windows in Hickey’s porcelain-enamel skin, re-tile the checkerboard floor, and insert plumbing and wiring. As they crawl around the peeled frame of the arched-roof building, their faces are eager and focused behind their protective eye goggles, and their banter with the teachers and each other is excited. They proudly pull drills and hand tools from professional-looking tool belts at their hips.
"They’ll each get to take a belt home with them, along with a good-quality hammer, tape measure and chisels," says John Scott, RITS’s Community Liaison. "These kids are engaged, looking forward to this class. They’re learning how to work, while in a safe, nurturing environment. And 80% of them tell us they want to work with their hands like this when they get out, producing something tangible instead of being stuck at a desk."
Hickey’s is one of four diners so far, dating from the 1920s through the 1950s, that have been trucked in from around New England for restoration at RITS. Three other early-20th-century diners are slated for overhauls at nearby high schools and job-training institutes. The mobile buildings’ safe landings are part of the New Hope Diner Project, a two-year-old initiative of a public-private collaboration called the New Hope Alliance, an unlikely assortment of developers, preservationists, government officials, college students and coffee-bean importers.
John Scott, who took college-level cooking classes and worked in restaurants before becoming a corrections officer, dreamed up the project four years ago with RITS’s culinary-arts instructor, Bill Tribelli. Both men rather enjoy the media limelight: Tribelli has published a cookbook, Jailhouse Cooking, and Scott has cooked on TV, as a contestant on the ABC show "The View’s Next Celebrity Chef Contest." For RITS students, Scott explains, diners made sense as manageably sized yet potentially high-profile training demos, partly because diners are especially beloved in Rhode Island.
In fact they were born there: in 1872, an entrepreneur named Walter Scott set up the country’s first easily movable restaurant, a horse-drawn food cart, outside a Providence newspaper headquarters. When RITS approached the American Diner Museum with the idea, Zilka realized it would help solve one of his institution’s persistent problems: "We get calls all the time from people looking to unload a diner they can’t maintain anymore," he says. Hauling the rescued structures to RITS, Zilka adds, "adds a whole new dimension to historic preservation, and gives a sense of accomplishment to people who need it badly."
Funding and in-kind support have come from a range of Rhode Island sources, including nonprofits (Preserve Rhode Island) and Providence construction companies. Students at Bryant University in Smithfield developed a pro bono marketing plan for Central American coffee sales that benefit the Diner Project – you can now buy bags of an organic, shade-grown blend named New Hope through New Harvest Coffee Roasters in Pawtucket (see www.newharvestcoffee.com). A Providence restaurant, Angelo’s Civita Farnese, is planning to adapt Hickey’s into a mobile branch. A tech-training school in Warwick is restoring a snub-nosed 1954 Chevy truck that can transport Hickey’s. The fates of the other half a dozen buildings in the Diner Project’s care have not yet been decided, but one will probably stay near RITS, as a restaurant for local office workers, with RITS residents as apprentice cooks, servers and cashiers.
"The poetry of this project," says Scott, "is that a forgotten population, a population people are reluctant to take a chance on, is restoring something that Americans cherish. We’ve had the families of the original diner owners come here, and get all emotional to see the buildings being worked on, and the kids are amazed to find out they have connections to this older group and are very respectful. You’d be amazed at the conversations about history and construction and cooking that we’re having now with these kids. And already one of our graduates has gone on to study building trades at a tech school."
Journalists keep stopping by, too, including reporters from the Boston Globe, NPR, and Fox TV so far. The residents are getting accustomed to being interviewed, yet they don’t sound coached. When I asked a teenager named Fernando whether he liked the class, he answered, "It’s great to see the progress, the big difference we’ve made."

New Hope Brand Coffee Booth at the 41st Annual Scituate Arts Festival.

2008-09-04T02:41:00.002-04:00

Please be sure to visit the New Hope Brand Coffee Booth at the 41st Annual Scituate Arts Festival. The Scituate Arts Festival begins Columbus Day Weekend October 11-13, 2008. Admission is free and is open from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Last year was New Hope Coffee's first year at the Festival and we met many wonderful people who were excited for and supportive of the New Hope Diner Project.
Come visit us again at our location next door to the North Scituate Baptist Church located at 619 West Greenville Road (also known as Route 116) in North Scituate, Rhode Island.

Click here for directions

Interested in a Diner History Lecture and Tour?

2008-07-15T19:53:00.008-04:00

Would you be interested in a Diner History Lecture and or Bus Tour in Massachusetts & Rhode Island? We are planning several events and would like your input.
Send us an email.

NewHopeDinerProject@yahoo.com

Youthful Offenders Restoring Luster to Diners of Old

2008-07-14T03:33:00.003-04:00

New York Times
July 14, 2008

Youthful Offenders Restoring Luster to Diners of Old
By PAM BELLUCK

CRANSTON, R.I. — Classic American diners are dinosaurs these days. Many of them, anyway.
Take Sherwood’s Diner, once so popular in Worcester, Mass., that patrons who were firefighters rigged a fire bell to ring inside the diner.

Or Hickey’s Diner, hooked to a 1954 Chevy truck on the town green in Taunton, Mass.
Or the gigantic Louis’ Diner in Concord, N.H., with stained-glass windows, basket-weave tile, and a colorful history, including having an owner who was convicted of rum-running during Prohibition.

These were places where Americans dawdled, debated and dated, kibitzing over sliders (sausage patties), sinkers (donuts), and Adam and Eve on a raft (poached eggs on toast).
Now, some defunct diners are getting a new lease on life from an unlikely source: young people in jail.

Behind the razor wire at Rhode Island’s juvenile detention center, teenage offenders are restoring four vintage diners that have been brought there by preservationists for the New Hope Diner Project.

This fall, the first restored diner, Hickey’s, should open in Rhode Island, with some of the teenagers working the griddles and the cash register, and even preparing to manage the restaurant someday.

“The whole poetry behind it is that these are kids who have been pretty much cast away emotionally and criminally, getting a chance to restore beloved eateries that have been cast off from society, too,” said Daniel Zilka, the acting director of the American Diner Museum, who rescues decrepit diners and helps run the project. “If they continue on the path that they’ve been moving upon they would end up in an adult correctional facility. This is probably their last opportunity.”

The offenders at the detention center, some as young as 13, have been convicted of crimes like sexual assault, armed robbery, breaking and entering, and drug offenses, and sentenced to serve 6 to 18 months. The center, the Rhode Island Training School, also has maximum security for offenders including murderers, but offenders qualify for the project only if they behave well enough to move to the regular detention population. They must also have, or nearly have, a high school equivalency diploma.

Rob, 16, convicted of assault with a deadly weapon for striking his sister’s former boyfriend with a bat, rendering him deaf in one ear, is one of 16 youths reconstructing Hickey’s — its mahogany subfloor, porcelain panels, and a 1954 Chevy truck that Mr. Zilka bought on eBay.
“It keeps my mind off the negative,” said Rob (state officials withheld last names because juvenile offenders’ records are not public). “I can say, ‘Yeah I helped make that.’ ”
Rob, who said he had “been in detention a million times,” said he preferred the diner work over some other training programs, like the poetry and rapping workshop, which he said censored some language.

“You can’t express what you want — nothing about drugs, violence, sex,” said Rob, who plans to record a rap album and call it “In Harm’s Way, Volume 1: Talk Is Cheap.” “They just want us to rap positive. But I can’t just be talking about sunshine and flowers and how colorful they are. That’s not my life experience.”

Devin, 18, with a 10-year history of armed robbery and lesser crimes, said he also values the diner program, especially taking apart the stove and refrigerator because, “I always want to break things.”

“I’ve been doing the carpentry class my whole bid, but before the diner I was doing little boxes and plaques that you send home,” he said. “That really don’t teach you nothing.”
Now he is thinking of a carpentry job or diner work after he is released.

Fueling such ambitions is the point, said John Scott, the community liaison for the school who had the idea for the project, including the tool belts that offenders get when they are released.
“Building birdhouses like a traditional high school program is not what these kids need,” Mr. Scott said. “We’re actually preparing them for all kinds of skills: there’s ceramic tile in these diners, sheet metal work, plumbing, electrical. You always meet people who want these kids to be locked away, and I respect their ill-informed opinion. But I look at the training school as kind of like Home Depot of the correctional system. We give them the tools, and when they’re ready to use it, they’ll use it.”

Other offenders here take culinary arts classes, receiving food-handling certificates.
Bill Tribelli, the culinary arts instructor, will help devise the diner menus, featuring some old standbys like corned beef and cabbage and “hot wieners,” but also recipes from his cookbook, “Jailhouse Cooking.” Those dishes include Jailhouse Chicken, Jailhouse-Style Macaroni and Cheese (made with WisPride or Velveeta), or Strawberry Mousse (Cool Whip and instant strawberry pudding).

“We need to have jailhouse things,” Mr. Tribelli said. “Most of the people in the jail clientele like their food hot, spicy and full of cheese.”
Mr. Zilka envisions contemporary updates like tiramisù pancakes.
“Who goes to diners now and has tapioca pudding or liver and onions?” he said.
To keep the cash-strapped state from paying $25,000 to $200,000 to restore each diner, Mr. Scott and Mr. Zilka found partners in Rhode Island. New Harvest Coffee Roasters in Pawtucket concocted New Hope coffee (organic, fair trade, shade grown), and about $4 of each $11 bag supports the project.

Students at Bryant University in Smithfield are creating business plans for each diner. Angelo’s, an 84-year-old landmark restaurant in Providence, will operate the diners, employing offenders once they are released.

“Hopefully, one of them will be able to own one,” said Robert Antignano, the president of Angelo’s.
Norm Lambert, the carpentry teacher, said he had initially questioned giving offenders access to dangerous tools. “When I first started working here, I thought how foolish is this?” Mr. Lambert said. “You get a little bit of behavior problems. But it’s kind of like a carrot you hang over their head. If they act up and I have to discipline them, they’re not going to come back.”
Julian, 18, who said his offenses included grand larceny and beating up his father, knows that “if you assault anybody with tools it’s an extra two years.” He wants to put his juvenile record behind him, attend a college like Brown University and go to law school. Then, he said, “I want to be a state governor, actually.”

Families who owned the diners laud the restorations and do not mind the connection to convicted criminals.

“My father was one of the biggest juvenile delinquents there was till the day he died,” said Virginia Ryan, whose father, Ernest, operated Sherwood’s. He did not commit crimes, she said, but practical jokes, like resting a spoon on the stove before giving it to a customer who complained the soup was too cold. “The guy burned his lip.”
Joyce Hickey, whose father, John, ran Hickey’s, said having juvenile offenders restore diners is “fitting almost in some ways.”

“A wide variety of people frequented the diner, the continuum of life,” Ms. Hickey said. “My father was a fair man. He always did see the good in people without being blinded by the bad.”

Speedway diner hauled away

2008-06-25T22:17:00.010-04:00

Speedway diner hauled away

By MARGOT SANGER-KATZ

Monitor staff

If you saw a diner traveling down Interstate 93 last week, you weren't hallucinating. The 1930s-era Barr's Diner had just been removed from the grounds of the New Hampshire Motor Speedway and was on its way to the Diner Museum in Rhode Island for restoration.

The diner sat on the speedway property since the mid-1950s, that is, before the speedway sat there. Diner historian Daniel Zilka believes it dates to the mid-1930s and was built by the Jerry O'Mahony Dining Car Co. of Elizabeth, N.J. Over the years, it has served as a diner, gas station, carryout deli and, most recently, an office hub for the transportation crews on race weekends. But the years have taken their toll on the structure. John Zudell, the speedway's vice president of operations and development said the building was cramped, lacked access for the disabled and had a leaky roof.

A new modular building has already moved it at the diner site, just in time for race weekend. The diner itself will be restored by a group of vocational students as part of the museum's New Hope Diner program, which matches diners in need of work with students from a local juvenile corrections facility. The speedway put up more than $13,000 for transportation costs and hired Bow's Rick Geddes to haul it. According to Zudell, Geddes has transported enough diners to have a special trailer for the purpose.

The building's future after restoration is uncertain, according to Zilka, the acting director of the museum. "Our main goal is to preserve diners and diner culture," he said.

Hickey's Diner - Taunton, MA. Landmark.- Worcester Diner #798

2008-06-06T23:34:00.003-04:00

Students are working to get Hickey's Diner back on the road.

Hickey's Last of its Kind

Taunton Gazette

By: Mike Williams

(The History of Hickey's Diner)
click on the article to read

____________________________________

Hickey's Diner parked on the Taunton Green.

Click on the above article from the Enterprise News.
Written by Charles Crowley

Below: Photos of Hickey's Diner before restoration began. Come back as we add more photos.

Built in 1947 by the Worcester Lunch Car Co. WLC #798.

Click here to see the updates on the restoration of the truck that will pull Hickey's Diner.

If you have photos or memories of Hickey's Diner that you would like to share please email us

at: HickeysDiner@AmericanDinerMuseum.org

Sherwood's Diner may return to join visitor center complex

2008-06-05T03:32:00.003-04:00

Jun 1, 2008
Sherwood's Diner may return to join visitor center complex'50s landmark on Foster St.

By Thomas Caywood
TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

WORCESTER— The hard-knocks journey of Sherwood's Diner from its heyday on Foster Street in the 1950s to mothballs to a Rhode Island juvenile detention center may eventually lead back to the city.

The Worcester Historical Museum is evaluating a proposal to set up and operate the diner - once it's restored as part of training program for at-risk teens in Rhode Island - at the visitor center and history museum complex planned for the area of the junction of the Massachusetts Turnpike and the recently completed Route 146 extension into the city.

"This is a very significant offer, and we're taking it very seriously," said William D. Wallace, the museum's executive director.

The planned new museum and Worcester visitor center, part of the $300 million Route 146 project, is slated for the old Washburn & Moen factory.

Project planners and architects still must weigh in on the idea of incorporating the historic diner into the visitor center and museum, and a deal with an outside vendor would have to be worked out to operate the eatery, Mr. Wallace said.

"I think it's an exciting idea, but we're still a long way from decision time." He plans to go see the restoration effort himself tomorrow.

Sherwood's was a Foster Street fixture for two decades until it closed in 1969. In the years that followed, the diner was put in storage, moved to Auburn to become an ice cream parlor, closed again, vandalized, picked over for souvenirs, left to rot for a decade, and eventually preserved. Finally, in 1999 it was mothballed by the American Diner Museum in Providence.

The Worcester landmark got a second chance at a useful life three years ago when a Rhode Island correction officer came up with a plan to teach job skills to young people locked up for delinquency by restoring old diners to their former condition. Officials at the American Diner Museum in Providence got involved, and Sherwood's was one of the dilapidated lunch cars selected for the program.

The roughly $80,000 project began this spring at the Rhode Island Training School in Cranston. The youths working on the project are part of a vocational program of the Juvenile Correction Division of the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families.

Sherwood's was built by the Worcester Lunch Car Co. in 1940, and was operated in Medford for about 10 years before being moved to Worcester. Before the restoration began, the diner museum had had Sherwood's in storage. One of the other diners in line to be restored at the school is the former Mugsy's, which served up chow on Chandler Street in Worcester under different names until the early 1990s.

Virginia W. Ryan of Worcester, daughter of the late Sherwood's owner, Ernest J. Ryan, said she has her fingers crossed that the diner where, as a girl, she worked with her father, might come back to the city."I'm overjoyed," she said. "The fact that it could be a functional diner again in Worcester, I'm ecstatic and so is my whole family."Ms. Ryan has been involved in organizing the restoration and the fundraising to pay for it. She will accompany Mr. Wallace on the trip to the Rhode Island Training School tomorrow, and she hopes to see the restored diner with people slinging hash again in the future.

"I think it would be fun for the old-timers who went into the diner when it was on Foster Street," she added. "It would be fun for them to go there and reminisce."

WFUV News and Public Affairs - History of the American Diner

2008-05-14T01:01:00.004-04:00

Cityscape
May 3, 2008

On this week's Cityscape, we're serving up a plate of segments on the classic American diner. We'll explore the history of the diner and visit a New York City eatery where the wait staff is also the entertainment.

Listen to the program here: WFUV

Bryant University SIFE Team win Regional Competition for the New Hope Diner Project

2008-04-01T23:16:00.017-04:00

Bryant students are SIFE regional champs
By Susan A. Baird PBN Web Editor

SMITHFIELD – Bryant University’s Students in Free Enterprise community outreach team will advance to the national contest for the sixth time in seven years, after again placing as a champion in the SIFE USA Regional Competition.
The team was awarded $1,500 for winning the regional contest, and another $1,000 for placing as a finalist in the GE Consumer Products Program Sustainability Competition.

“This achievement represents the validation of all the projects Bryant SIFE has completed this year,” Matthew Veves, a Bryant sophomore from Hudson, N.H., and a presenter with the school’s SIFE team, said in a statement today. The team also included executive board members Julie Wentzell, president; Daniel Caulfield, vice president; Brittany Aiesi, project coordinator; Stephen Balkam, treasurer; Amanda Dunne, PR coordinator; Robert Taylor, presentation coordinator; and Kathryn Rzasa, secretary.
SIFE teams complete projects focusing on market economics, entrepreneurship, personal financial skills or business ethics, then prepare a written report. At the competition, each student team has 24 minutes to give its audio-visual presentation before a panel of business leaders, then 5 minutes to field questions from the panelists.
The Bryant team – with Sam Walton Fellow and faculty adviser David Greenan – organized 19 projects this academic year, including a Technology for the Elderly program that helped local residents learn how to use digital cameras, shop on eBay and stay in touch with their families via e-mail. “It’s a different kind of competition from anything else I’ve been a part of,” Veves said. “It’s not solely about winning; it’s about seeing all the good that each SIFE chapter has done for the community.”

The regional contest, sponsored by CVS/pharmacy, was held April 1 at the Crowne Plaza at the Crossings in Warwick. Bryant tied with the University of Southern Maine, in Portland, for the League 2 championship, while the University of Massachusetts–Dartmouth took first runner-up and Lehigh Valley College of Center Valley, Pa., was second runner-up. Salve Regina University of Newport was second runner-up in League 1, placing behind Boston College and Maine Maritime Academy, the league champ, but ahead of Boston’s Wentworth Institute of Technology.
Champions from the regional contests will advance to the 2008 SIFE USA National Exposition, to be held in Chicago May 13 to 15. National winners will go on to vie for the SIFE World Cup.
Students in Free Enterprise is an international nonprofit organization that works with businesses and educational institutions to encourage students to use their classroom knowledge to address real-world issues. Their outreach projects are showcased at annual competitions in which regional winners advance to the national contest and national winners vie for the SIFE World Cup. To learn more, visit http://www.sife.org/.

_______________________________________________________
Congratulations to all our friends on Bryant University SIFE Team for their hard work and dedication to all their projects, but especially the New Hope Diner Project! A special thank you to David Greenan, Bryant Professor and Samuel Walton Fellow SIFE Team Advisor for the inspiration and leadership he provides to his students.

The Bryant University SIFE Team also enters its community projects into competitions against other SIFE Teams from around the world. It is our pleasure to announce that Bryant University won the SIFE Regional today at the Crowne Plaza. The next competition is the 2008 SIFE USA National Exposition on May 13-15, 2008 in Chicago, IL at the McCormick Place Convention Center.

Last year, while on their summer retreat, Bryant's SIFE Executive Board agreed to work with us on the New Hope Diner Project. The SIFE Team agreed to work with us to develop a marketing plan for New Hope Brand Coffee and he development of a business plan for Mike's Diner. Mike’s Diner is a vintage mobile eatery and was a downtown Providence, Rhode Island landmark for more than 25 years from the mid 1960’s to the mid 1990’s.

Students in Free Enterprise is a global non-profit organization active in more than 40 countries. SIFE is funded by financial contributions from corporations, entrepreneurs, foundations, government agencies and individuals. Working in partnership with business and higher education, SIFE establishes student teams on university campuses. Teams are led by faculty advisors and are challenged to develop community outreach projects that reach SIFE's five educational topics:
Market Economics
Success Skills
Entrepreneurship
Financial Literacy
Business Ethics

Angelo’s Civita Farnese is U.S. family business of year

2008-04-01T19:21:00.000-04:00

Angelo’s Civita Farnese is U.S. family business of year

PROVIDENCE – Angelo’s Civita Farnese on Atwells Avenue in Providence is the longest-operating family-owned restaurant in Rhode Island, a fact that was recognized today by the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Steve Preston, the SBA’s national administrator, presented the 2008 National Jeffrey H. Butland Family-Owned Business of the Year award to owner and operator Robert Antignano during a luncheon gathering at the Federal Hill restaurant, attended by Rhode Island dignitaries including Gov. Donald L. Carcieri, Mayor David N. Cicilline and U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, among others.

Antignano is the third-generation family member to own and operate Angelo’s, which opened in its existing location in 1924 and still features the original white marble tables that have seated customers for more than 80 years. He has tripled the number of employees and increased revenue by more than 300 percent since taking over the business in 1988.

“Robert Antignano epitomizes the hard work, risk-taking and the creativity that are characteristics of successful American entrepreneurs,” Preston said.

“Family-owned small businesses are a vital segment of our economy because they provide the continuity and long-term benefits that are so important to their customers, their employees and their communities,” said Sandy Blitz, the SBA’s New England regional administrator, based in Boston, who also was present for today’s event.

Antignano told the Providence Business News that he was “very honored” and “very surprised” by the award, recounting how exciting it has been to first win the SBA award on the state level, then the regional level and now, the national.

His grandfather through marriage, Angelo Mastrodicasa, opened the restaurant, naming it for himself and Farnese, a small village 12 miles west of Rome where he came from, Antignano said. (“Civita” means community.)

Mastrodicasa in the 1920s envisioned a restaurant for the working people of Federal Hill, an ideal Antignano pursues to this day, the SBA said, by keeping prices affordable and maintaining the integrity of the food and service.

Antignano said he still works in the kitchen “every day, seven days a week,” whenever he is needed and his wife, Rosalie Antigano, does the paperwork.

“It’s a fun place to work,” said waitress Katie Howard, who has been at Angelo’s for three years. “He’s a family guy,” she said of the owner and “it’s basically because of him” that Angelo’s has become such a Rhode Island tradition. He is a good boss, she said, citing as an example the way he arranged for parking spaces for employees in a nearby church lot.

Antignano will officially receive the award in Washington, D.C., on April 23, during the national Small Business Week celebration. Today’s gathering was arranged because Preston was in the area, visiting small business throughout Rhode Island.

For information about the U.S. Small Business Administration and its programs, call the SBA’s Rhode Island office at 528-4561 or visit www.sba.gov.

The restoration of Sherwood's Diner - Worcester Diner #755

2008-03-30T20:33:00.010-04:00

Above & below: The original floor plan for Sherwood's Diner showing the design of the diner by the Worcester Lunch Car Co. from the archives of the American Diner Museum .

History of Sherwood's Diner

Worcester Diner #755 represents a standard barrel roof design available from the Worcester Lunch Car Company during the 1930s through the 1940s. According to surviving company production records, Diner #755, measuring 14’6” x 28’, was built for Treadway L. Sherwood of Brooklyn, New York. It was constructed at the factory, 4 Quinsigamond Avenue, Worcester, Massachusetts from October 1939 to February 1940. Following the completion, it was delivered to its original location in Medford, Massachusetts by Arthur LaFleur Trucking.

Diner #755 was repossessed by the company sometime during 1941 and returned to Worcester, Massachusetts. Ernest Ryan purchased Sherwood’s Diner in 1942 to replace his Foster Diner (56 Foster Street) on the corner of Foster Street and Commercial Street in Worcester. Ernest Ryan operated Sherwood’s Diner until his death in 1969. Mrs. Mae Ryan and her children attempted to keep the business going but decided to sell in 1971 when the city of Worcester offered to purchase the property for redevelopment.

Sherwood’s was moved twice before it was semi permanently placed on Route 12 in Auburn, Massachusetts. The diner was converted to an ice cream stand and operated there only for a few years before closing. The diner was left to the mercy of vandals and the forces of nature. The beauty of the diner was fading as parts were stripped for souvenirs and salvage.

In the fall of 1994, the owner of the property donated the Worcester #755 to the American Diner Museum. It was immediately boarded up and secured from further vandalism. Members of the Museum tracked down missing exterior porcelain panels, booths and tables, stools and other elements for a diner exhibition at the Rhode Island Historical Society in 1995. Following the exhibit all recovered parts were placed in storage. We would like to thank John Tighe for if it was not for his donation of this diner to the American Diner Museum it would most likely no longer exist.

Additional Information on this project click here.

Above : Sherwood's Diner just prior to the lift off of it's foundation.
Hydraulic Jacks were used to left Sherwood's Diner off the ground so it could be placed on a flatbed truck.

These photos show Sherwood's Diner as it

sat abandoned in Auburn, Ma.

Photos above: These photographs show Sherwood's Diner as it was found in Auburn, Ma. after an attempt was made to use the diner as an ice cream stand failed and Sherwood's Diner was left abandoned. The American Diner Museum rescued the diner from further damage and today the diner is one of three diners built by the Worcester Lunch Car Co. being restored by the New Hope Diner Restoration Project.

Right: An original interior photo of the diner.

Above:Volunteers brace the interior front wall of Sherwood's Diner
for continued interior restoration.

The above photo from the American Diner Museum archives shows the diner at it's 2nd location at Foster & Commercial St's in Worcester, MA. Sherwood's Diner original location was Medford, MA.
Sherwood's was delivered to Medford, MA. in February of 1940

The following article from May 1999 highlights the donation and rescue by volunteers from demolition of two vintage diners including Sherwood's Diner.

2008 Heritage Harbor Museum and Library update: Heritage Harbor Museum

Worcester Telegram & Gazette

DINER, THEN AND NOW \ AMERICANA ROLL OFF TO MUSEUM

May 20, 1999 Section: LOCAL NEWS Page: B1 By Gerard F. Russell

AUBURN - Hop on a stool for a spin into history. The Dairy Doll diner rolled away yesterday, bound for a museum that preserves these remnants of Americana dotting the nation's roadsides. A landmark here since the early 1970s, the dusty diner was lifted from its Southbridge Street foundation for its trip to Rhode Island.

The former ice cream and hamburger joint, between Cantwell Hardware and Colony Package Store, was donated to The American Diner Museum of Providence by owner John P. Tighe of Dayville, Conn.

BOUGHT FOR $500

It joined another unfinished diner that rolled out of a Worcester garage Tuesday and headed south. Francis Van Slett, of Van Slett Advertising on Park Avenue, donated that diner.

Manufactured in 1940 by the Worcester Lunch Car Co., the Auburn diner first opened for business in Medford as Sherwood's Diner. About 10 years later, it was moved to Commercial and Foster streets in Worcester. Later, it was moved to make way for the Centrum and ended up in a local salvage yard.

Tighe said he bought the diner for $500 in 1972 and named it the Dairy Doll, but a sugar shortage in the early 1970s soured the ice cream business.
Yesterday, it cost a lot more to move it. Moving costs run about $20,000, museum Director Daniel A. Zilka said yesterday, and thousands more will be spent to restore the diner to its original condition.

A SLOW MOVE

Amid a light mist, Zilka stood and watched workers jack up the diner before it was lowered onto a flatbed trailer truck. It took several hours for a crew of workers from O.B. Hill of Boston to get the diner on the road, a relatively small moving job for the professional moving company.

A historic preservationist, Zilka said he has restored a couple of dozen diners around the country. In their heyday, about 6,000 diners were in use nationwide. Some survived the challenges of time and fast-food chains; about 2,500 are left, he said. While the Auburn diner survived, it needs a lot of work. It sat vacant for many years between its various points of service.

Wooden slats on an outside wall are rotted and will have to be replaced. Patches of rust dot the diner's skin. Inside, a ceramic tile floor is dusty, but in good shape. The counter is still intact. Interior furnishings were removed several years ago for safekeeping.

Tighe circled the diner with a camera yesterday, taking shots at different angles as workers maneuvered wooden blocks and jacks under the diner's rusted beams.

"There are worse ones," said Tighe, commenting on the diner's condition. When he bought the diner, it was done with nostalgia. Tighe, a former Auburn resident, said he used to be a bricklayer and frequently ate in diners. In its new life, the diner will again serve customers, but at the museum. It will take about eight months to restore it, Zilka estimated.

The Worcester diner donated this week by Van Slett was a partly assembled Worcester Deluxe Diner. Van Slett bought the diner and what was left of the Worcester Lunch Car Co. in the early 1960s. Discovered inside that diner was an old journal of sketches, specifications and other information about diners made at the Worcester Lunch Car Co., Zilka said.

The American Diner Museum of Providence is one of 12 historical and cultural museums in the Heritage Harbor Museum and Library, located in a former power plant donated by Narragansett Electric Co.

Visitors will be able to learn the history of American diners through a reference library of manufacturers' records, a registry of diners, and a collection of photographs and artifacts, Zilka said. The museum is a nonprofit organization established in 1996.

Comments: HickeysDiner@americandinermuseum.org

Resurrecting Louis' Diner - Worcester Diner # 708

2008-02-14T05:30:00.011-05:00

This 60x14 ft. diner was is Worcester Lunch Car # 708 the former Louis' Diner of Concord, NH. & Rich's Annex Diner of Newburyport, MA.

Roadside Sign from Louis' Diner When the diner was open in Concord, N.H.

Concord Monitor. Concord N.H.

Resurrecting Louis' Diner
Onetime local hangout could live again - to the south
10/27/2007
By RAY DUCKLER Monitor staff

Remember the sounds and smells of Louis' Diner? Breakfast with the family on Sunday morning, forks scraping up scrambled eggs. Maybe breakfast or a burger after midnight, your table a bit loud after, uh, a drink or two. Or maybe a simple cup of coffee, a sandwich and the newspaper, about noon.
Louis' still lives, and it'll be back in circulation, probably in 2009. The old-school diner, which sat near the junction of Route 3 and Airport Road, just before the speed limit increased from 30 to 50 mph as you drove from downtown to Pembroke, will be rebuilt in Cranston, home of the Rhode Island Training School for Youth.
The detention center houses some tough cookies from the Providence area, teens who've sold cocaine, stolen cars, even committed murder.
Nearby Providence is home to the American Diner Museum - yes, one exists - which rescues old diners from demolition and sometimes restores them. The museum and the training school began working together more than a year ago on a project to rebuild diners while helping these kids develop a skill, to be used later in life.
They'll learn to build, to cook, to run a business, while grasping concepts of discipline and responsibility. Two old New England diners sit on the grounds of the training school. Louis' is out front, near the electronic main gate. The "residents," as they're called, will begin working on it in the spring. Until then, it will sit quietly, up on wooden cylinders, stacked like Lincoln Logs, with old gutters on the floor inside and paint chipping on the outside.
"There's elegance to Louis' Diner, and sometimes it sounds funny using the word elegance and diner at the same time," said John Scott, the training school's community liaison. "But Louis' Diner was actually a rather elegant diner on the inside, a real old-school diner. We've been reaching out to some local restaurateurs who would consider being an operator of a diner of that magnitude."
Louis' has a long history, both clean and dirty. It opened in Newburyport, Mass., in 1932, as Rich's Diner, built by the Worcester Lunch Car Co. Business was so good that owner Herman Rich asked Worcester to nearly double the size of the slender, railroad-style dining car.
Rich's Annex Diner opened soon after. Too bad Rich was in the slammer by time it was completed, busted for rum-running in 1932, during the final stages of Prohibition. He served two years in a penitentiary in Atlanta.
Rich eventually moved his diner to the Wonderland Dog Track in Revere, Mass., in 1936. A year later, he sold it to Charles "Mac" Andrews, who already owned a pizza place, now United Shoe Repair, next door to the run-down and abandoned downtown theater.
Andrews moved it to Concord in 1937, before selling it to Louis Kontos in '41.
Louis' was born.

Not Louie's.
Louis'.
"There was a huge French-Canadian population," said Daniel Zilka, the executive director of the American Diner Museum. "That's where the pronunciation came from, I guess."
Louis' was later sold in the 1980s and retained its name. One of its owners was arrested in 1996 for distributing cocaine from the diner.
The Concord institution's ride ended in 1999, when it closed after the owners defaulted on the mortgage and didn't pay water, sewer or real estate taxes.
The Merchants Nissan Car dealership across the street purchased the diner to expand its car display space. Thankfully, Louis' was donated to the American Diner Museum and trucked down to Rhode Island.
Louis' is the lone diner on the Save America's Treasure list. It's the largest existing diner built by the Worcester Lunch Car Co.
And now this tasty nugget from our history sits alone in front of a fence, waiting for a facelift while ghosts from a state capital 2½ hours away eat and chat.
The building is structurally sound, with shingles from the 1930s still visible from the outside. The green paint is cracked and chipped. The entrance is on the end, with seven wooden steps leading inside.
There, the colors on the tiled floor are faded. The booths are gone, as are the seats that once twirled in front of the counter. Only four thick metal polls remain, formerly the foundations for the stools. The cooking necessities behind the counter, storage compartments and skillets, are still there, broken apart. The ceiling needs to be redone.
Many of the old components from the Louis' as we knew it remain, stored in a warehouse 25 miles away. There's the famous sign, the windows, the booths. New hat racks will be needed.
The teens begin remodeling this spring. Work should take a year. The goal is to keep the diner in the Providence area, with a new name, The New Hope Diner.
"Vintage diners that have been cast aside, like this one here, would have been demolished if not donated to us," Zilka said. "And it's a reflection on the kids that come here. They're neglected kids or they come from broken families or one of their parents is in prison. They have another possibility to get it right." So does Louis'. Good luck, old friend.

Additional Photos found here

New Hope Diner Project Presents at the 2008 New England Council on Crime and Delinquency Conference

2008-02-12T21:19:00.000-05:00

On Monday November 17, 2008 representatives of the New Hope DinerProject will be presenting to probation and correctional professionalsat the 69th Annual New England Council on Crime and Delinquency (NECCD)Training Institute.
The focus of the presentation will be The New Hope Diner Project Collaboration: Juvenile Corrections and Social Enterprise. The 2008 NECCD Conference will be held November 16 thru 19, 2008 atthe Hyatt Regency Hotel on Goat Island in Newport, Rhode Island. On November 16th, 17th, and 18th the New Hope Diner Project will have a booth where New Hope Brand Coffee will be sold to help raise funds andawareness for the project.

New Hope Coffee is Now Available at New Havest Coffee Roasters.

2008-02-01T22:23:00.002-05:00

New Hope Brand Coffee customers can now order New Hope Brand Coffee at New Havrest Coffee Roasters. New Hope Organic, Fair Trade, Shade Grown Coffee.

New Hope Blend is a perfect blend of bright lively Central American beans complemented with undertones of dark caramel and a dash of darkroast. The proceeds from the New Hope Brand Coffee sales go to the New Hope Diner Project. The New Hope Diner Project, provides educational,vocational and employment opportunities to the youth in the care of the Department of Children, Youth & Families, Division of Juvenile Correctional Services.

Click here to place you order now!

Serving up 2d chances, for diners, teens

2008-01-09T11:41:00.000-05:00

Serving up 2d chances, for diners, teens

An unlikely collaboration gives troubled youths fresh hope

By Jenna Russell, Boston Globe Staff January 6, 2008

CRANSTON, R.I. - The American Diner Museum had a problem: a growing storehouse of decrepit vintage diners, and no money, space, or labor to restore them.

The Rhode Island Training School had troubles of its own. A state correctional facility for juvenile offenders, under pressure to push young prisoners toward productive futures, it was facing the elimination of its carpentry classes.

Then museum and prison found each other, and forged an unexpected partnership.

Now, students at the Training School are restoring three of the museum's run-down diners, once beloved landmarks in Worcester and Taunton, and Concord, N.H. The troubled young men have learned dozens of marketable construction skills in the course of the painstaking renovation, said school leaders. The project will also give the Training School a groundbreaking new way to prepare its students for the workforce, when one of the rehabilitated diners is reopened and run as a restaurant by the young offenders.

"It's providing new life for the diners, and also new hope for the kids," said Daniel Zilka, the acting director of the American Diner Museum, which buys old diners and tries to find new owners to preserve them. "Their next stop, if they continue on the path of bad behavior, is adult corrections. This could be a chance for them to turn their lives around."

To oversee its move into the restaurant business, the prison has recruited another unlikely partner - a group of business majors at Bryant University in Smithfield. Members of a campus club, Students in Free Enterprise, they have broken into teams to draft a business plan for the prison-run diner, raise money for its restoration, and teach basic business classes for the teenage offenders.

During a recent class at the Training School, the uniformed teenagers slumped over their desks. Undaunted by their glazed looks, Bryant University junior Mike Howe launched into a mock job interview, playing the part of an ill-mannered applicant. He asked for "a lot of money," described being fired from his last job, and cut off his interviewer, telling him, "Hold on, my phone is ringing."

Behind the desks, faces brightened with appreciation for his performance. When Howe stopped and asked, "What was bad about that?" the young men were ready.

"Everything," they chorused, as their teacher beamed.

Tucked behind an upscale mall and surrounded by high wire fences, the Training School began in the 1800s as a workhouse where wayward youths learned blacksmithing and farming, said John Scott, the school's community liaison and a leader of the diner project. The Cranston facility, which is scheduled to relocate to a brand-new campus this year, houses 150 offenders, mostly males between 13 and 20, who serve an average sentence of six to nine months for crimes ranging from theft and drug possession to arson and murder.

The school's focus has shifted over time from vocational training to more traditional classroom education, said Scott. Concerned that the change has left students without the practical skills they need most, he said he was looking for a way to bolster vocational programs when he stumbled on the dilapidated diners.

"A lot of kids want to work with their hands, and we got away from that," Scott said. "I hope to see the pendulum move back."

The diner museum saw a rare opportunity in the project, not only to burnish some of its faded jewels, but to excite a younger generation about a disappearing slice of Americana. The Providence-based museum, founded in 1996, has no permanent exhibition space, but it collects old diners and helps find buyers.

To cover the costs of the restoration, project leaders persuaded a Rhode Island company, New Harvest Coffee Roasters of Pawtucket, to create a special brand, called New Hope, to help raise funds for the students' work. All sales of the coffee directly benefit the restoration. Bryant students are marketing the brand, creating a website for the coffee, recruiting retail outlets to sell it, and promoting it at events, netting more than $5,000 in sales since October.

"What we're really selling is the story behind the coffee," said Julie Wentzell, a senior marketing major from Lynnfield, Mass.

Working indoors for the winter, Training School students are stripping wooden window frames taken from some of the diners, which sit parked outside under shrink-wrapped plastic. In the course of the restoration, they will have learned woodworking, roofing, welding, and wiring, among other trades, said their carpentry teacher, Norm Lambert. This winter they will learn how to make stained glass so they can replace missing window panes.

The young men said they hope the finished diners will change attitudes about them in the community.

"I hope it tells them not to give up on people," said Jermaine, 18, whose last name was withheld by officials under school rules. "People made mistakes, but mistakes are part of life. That's why they put the eraser on the pencil."

The three diners now being fixed up at the Training School were built in the 1930s and 1940s by the Worcester Lunch Car Co. Made before the age of the classic stainless-steel diner, their bodies are galvanized metal and porcelain enamel. Sherwood's Diner was run by the Ryan family in Worcester, and beloved by the city's police, before it closed in 1969. Hickey's Diner was a fixture in Taunton into the 1990s. Louis' Diner stood in Newburyport, and later, in Concord.

Mike's Diner, a former Providence landmark, is on its way from its last home in Kentucky to Cranston, where Training School students will replace the roof. When finished, Mike's will be reopened and run as a restaurant by Training School students. Other diners may also reopen. Scott said a Providence restaurant may run one of the diners and employ students from the Training School there.

The success of the project has prompted the museum to place more diners in the hands of vocational students. Students at high schools in Cranston and Lincoln, and participants in a federally funded Job Corps program in Exeter, will restore three other diners, said Zilka.

The diners now at the Training School are among some 2,400 that survive nationwide, Zilka said, half as many as 50 years ago. The school's efforts to reopen the diners are essential, he said, to preserve the diner experience as well as its architecture.

"The diners get restored, the kids get something cool to work on, and the Bryant students learn more about business," said Scott. "There's something in it for everyone."

Students In Free Enterprise E-Board members promote New Hope Coffee at the Holiday Sales Event held at Bryant University.

2007-12-14T00:50:00.002-05:00

Above left: Bryant University SIFE members hand out free cups of coffee to other students to taste test at the organizations two-day event in November to support the New Hope Diner Project."
In this photo: Jeff Shew and Emily Coutu (SIFE volunteers)

Above Right: Bryant University SIFE members volunteer their efforts to sell bags of coffee, as well as give out free cups, to spread the word about New Hope Coffee and the New Hope Diner Project."(From left to right) Katherine Wilkinson, Lauren Rafferty, Robert Taylor, and Lauren Johnston (Sitting)

"SIFE E-Board members promote New Hope Coffee at the Holiday Sales Event held at Bryant University in early December."(From left to right) Katie Rzasa, Steve Balkam, Amanda Dunne, and Julie Wentzell (Sitting)

Comments: HickeysDiner@americandinermuseum.org

All the fixings

2007-12-10T05:22:00.003-05:00

Sunday, December 9, 2007

All the fixings

Diner project serves up helpings of self-respect

By Thomas Caywood
TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
WORCESTER, Ma. — The Sherwood’s Diner served a lot of coffee and eggs for nearly two decades on Foster Street before it was closed in 1969, put in storage, moved to Auburn to become an ice cream parlor, closed again, vandalized, picked over for souvenirs, left to rot for a decade, and eventually mothballed by the American Diner Museum in Providence.

An ambitious plan concocted three years ago by a correction officer at a Rhode Island juvenile detention center aims to get the rusted and rotted former Worcester landmark back in hash-slinging condition — while also teaching at-risk teens about carpentry and self-respect.

Next spring, young people locked up at the Rhode Island Training School in Cranston will begin a roughly $80,000 ground-up restoration of the diner and two others in partnership with the diner museum. The youths are part of a vocational program of the Juvenile Correction Division of the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families

The juvenile detention center has long had a vocational program in carpentry, but the program amounted to little more than a high school wood shop class, said John Scott, the training school’s community liaison. Restoring a vintage diner will teach students real-world job skills they can’t learn building birdhouses, he said.

Mr. Scott was at the Knights of Columbus hall on Circuit Avenue last week along with Daniel A. Zilka, director of the diner museum, to meet with the daughter of the former Sherwood’s owner and with retired city police officers and firefighters who used to eat at the diner in its glory days on Foster Street in the 1940s and 1950s.

Three years ago, when he was a juvenile correction officer, Mr. Scott pitched the idea of restoring and operating a diner, which would combine the school’s carpentry and culinary arts programs. But the idea never went anywhere, he said. When the training school’s administration changed last year and he was promoted to community liaison, Mr. Scott tried again.

“I dusted off the idea and pitched it to the new administration, and they liked it. They said, ‘Go find a diner,’ ” Mr. Scott said.

That led him to Mr. Zilka and the diner museum, which Mr. Scott was shocked to learn was in Providence, just a few miles away from the school in Cranston. With guidance and expertise from the museum, which owns several run-down diners in need of restoration, including Sherwood’s, the plan was dubbed the New Hope Diner Project and grew to include plans to fix up three diners.

Sherwood’s was built by the Worcester Lunch Car Co. in 1940 and was operated in Medford for about 10 years before moving to Worcester. The diner museum has had Sherwood’s in storage since 1999. One of the other diners in line to be restored at the school is the former Mugsy’s, which was served up chow on Chandler Street in Worcester under different names until the early 1990s, Mr. Zilka said.

His vision calls for the three restored diners eventually to be operated in spots along the historic Blackstone Valley corridor between Providence and Worcester. Exactly where and when hasn’t been decided, he said.

Virginia W. Ryan of Worcester, the daughter of the former Sherwood’s owner, Ernest J. Ryan, said she was ecstatic to hear her father’s beloved diner might get a second life.

“I don’t care where it is. I’d like to see it in Worcester, of course, but I just want to see it functional again anywhere,” Ms. Ryan said.

She said her father, who died in 1966, would be especially pleased to know troubled teens will have a hand in the restoration.

“My father was a juvenile delinquent to the day he died. I think if you ask some of these cops around here,” she quipped, referring to the elderly retired police officers gathered at the Knights of Columbus Hall, “they can attest that my brothers were, too.”

Most of teenagers locked up at the Rhode Island Training School have been sentenced to six to nine months for “waywardness” or “delinquency,” Mr. Scott said.

Sherwood’s today sits protected behind the school’s high security fences. It’s swaddled in shrink wrap for now to prevent further decay. Some materials and expertise that will be necessary for the restoration have been donated to the school, which also is selling its own brand of organic coffee to help raise money for the project, he said.

Although some preliminary work has been done, Mr. Scott said, construction should begin in earnest in the spring. Mr. Zilka expects the work to take more than a year to complete, with the student labor force turning over during that time as new teens arrive at the school and others are released.

“It will become a working diner again,” Mr. Zilka said.

To keep Sherwood’s as authentic as possible, project organizers had to track down stools, booths and other fixtures taken from the defunct diner as souvenirs. Amazingly, they got most of the diner’s pieces back, he said.

“It’ll be about 95 percent original,” he said. “There might be a booth here or there we don’t have, but it will be largely original.”

Mr. Scott said he hopes that some of the young people who help restore the three diners, or who learn to cook at the school, will ultimately be involved in operating the vintage eateries.

“We see this as a project to develop a work ethic on a project they can say is their own,” Mr. Scott said.

During its heyday, Sherwood’s stood on the corner of Foster and Commercial streets. The Fire Department headquarters was across the street at the time.

Kenneth C. Henderson of Worcester, who was a rookie firefighter in the mid-1950s, recalled that a fire alarm bell was wired to ring in the diner.

“Whenever the bell hit in the station, all those in the diner came running across the street to get on the trucks and answer the alarm,” Mr. Henderson recalled.

He also recalled Mr. Ryan whipping up batches of bologna sandwiches for the prisoners locked up in the holding cells at police headquarters. Retired Police Officer James W. Richardson of Worcester said the prisoners weren’t the only ones at the police station noshing on Sherwood’s Diner sandwiches in those days.

“It was a good place to eat,” he said of Sherwood’s. “If you liked bologna sandwiches, it was a great place to eat.”

The bartender on duty at the Knights of Columbus Hall last week, when the New Hope Diner Project organizers met with the retired police officers and firefighters, was 78-year-old Worcester native Francis J. Callery. He remembered eating at Sherwood’s between his stints as a Navy corpsman in World War II and the Korean War.

“You went out for a few beers, you always went to a diner after,” Mr. Callery said. “You never went home without stopping in at a diner.”

For Additional information on this project click here.
______________________________________________________

Do you have any memories or photographs of Sherwood's Diner? Email us at HickeysDiner@AmericanDinerMuseum.org

Order Up

2007-12-08T09:56:00.000-05:00

Letters: 12-06-07

Worcester Magazine
Written by staff
Thursday, 06 December 2007

Order up
I am so happy to see the article in Worcester Magazine about the restoration of the Sherwood Diner (City Desk / "New hope for the Sherwood," Nov. 21) but I must correct a gross error in the first paragraph, namely, that "the restoration is part of a project to raise money for a juvenile-detention facility in Rhode Island." Any money raised goes directly to the restoration of the diners.
This project was the brainchild of John Scott, community liaison for the Rhode Island Training School. John, originally a culinary teacher at the school, was promoted to his present position in 2004. He wanted to teach the post-secondary students something they could use as a craft when they eventually are released from this facility. He liked diners, looked on a computer and found Daniel Zilka's American Diner Museum. Thus began the creation of the New Hope Diner Restoration Project, in which the students have been learning historic skills by restoring diners.
Some family members and I toured the facility this past week and viewed three diners being restored. Daniel also joined us. I met Daniel 12 years ago when he came to see my mother and I. In 1969, my brother had removed the five booths and marble countertop and we had many things from the diner in our cellar because the diner was going to be used as a storage building on Route 20 after being taken by the Worcester Redevelopment Authority. We donated all of these items in 1995 to the American Diner Museum and these items will now be put back into the Sherwood. The Rhode Island Historical Society sponsored a four-month diner exhibition in 1995 featuring the Sherwood.
Although I have heard rumors of a feud between Daniel and I, it must be said that if Daniel wasn't around these diners would have been long gone. I indicated to Chet [Williamson, author of the article] that I would not be supporting the project if the Sherwood didn't remain in the area. I do hope it does but to see it restored and functioning anywhere would be great. So I have already started to raise funds for it by selling the New Hope Diner coffee and mugs and have many more ideas for the spring.
Interestingly enough, Daniel told me that in the early 1990s he approached someone at the Worcester Historical Society about having the diner museum here. Unfortunately the man replied, "Why would we want a diner museum in Worcester?" Daniel has all the original office furniture of Mr. Van Slett, who bought the Worcester Lunch Car company. He would love to recreate his office here in Worcester where it was originally. Hopefully, someone will come forward to make that a reality.

Virginia Ryan-Worcester

Great brew for diners

2007-11-09T23:55:00.001-05:00

Great brew for diners

Providence Journal

www.projo.com

Friday, November 9, 2007

By NEIL DOWNING
Journal Staff Writer

SMITHFIELD — Marjorie Krakue and Apryl Silva stopped by a kiosk at the Bryant University student center the other day to get a cup of coffee.
Krakue, 21, of Warwick, is studying international business at Bryant; Silva, 20, of East Providence, is studying management.
They were on their way to a meeting of the school’s Multicultural Student Union, and chose this kiosk because the coffee was free.
And that is just the way the kiosk’s organizers had planned things: distribute free samples as a way to promote the brand.
Members of Bryant’s “Students in Free Enterprise” group are seeking to popularize a new brand of coffee, called New Hope Coffee, to raise money for a project of the Rhode Island Training School, a juvenile-detention facility.
The money will help Training School youths restore old diners for the American Diner Museum, a Providence-based organization focused on preserving diners and diner culture.
Bryant students provide the business skills, the Training School youths learn vocational and business skills, and the museum gets some vintage diners restored, organizers said.
The Bryant group is writing a business plan for the former Mike’s Diner, which is undergoing renovation, said Dan Caulfield, 20, of Fairfield, Conn., a Bryant junior who is majoring in accounting.
The business plan will serve as a template for other diners to be restored, he said. The Bryant student group is also working on a marketing plan for the coffee.
So students staffed the kiosk on two days this week to distribute free cups of coffee to raise awareness for the New Hope brand, which is part of the New Hope Diner Project, Caulfield said.
Passersby could also buy one-pound bags of New Hope Coffee or purchase mugs. (A one-pound bag of regular coffee was selling for $11, a one-pound bag of decaffeinated coffee for $12, a mug for $3, the students said.)
What does New Hope Coffee taste like? It is a premium blend, mild-roast coffee — “a cross between Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks” — roasted by New Harvest Coffee Roasters of Pawtucket, said Lauren Rafferty, 19, of Enfield, Conn., a sophomore at Bryant who is studying management and marketing. All the money raised through the New Hope initiative goes to pay for the diner-renovation project; no taxpayer money is involved, she said.
“The state’s not paying for it; it’s all being done through donations,” Rafferty said. And the Bryant student group is an entirely volunteer organization; participants do not receive academic credit for their work, said Amanda Dunne, 20, of Salem, N.H., a junior at Bryant who is majoring in marketing.
The project was conceived by two Training School staff members: John Scott, community liaison, and William Tribelli, culinary-arts teacher. The plan is to restore Mike’s Diner, which had operated in Providence. When work is complete, Mike’s Diner will tour the state to promote the project.
The project will also result in the restoration, for commercial use, of Hickey’s Diner, Sherwood Diner and Louis’ Diner.
Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse, a Baltimore development firm that is involved in a number of redevelopment projects in Rhode Island, provided $10,000 in seed money to get several components of the project under way, according to a statement issued by Bryant.
As part of the project, the Bryant student group plans to teach the Training School youths about finance and other business matters, Caulfield said.
“The project is a really great thing for the students and for the community,” he said. By the end of this year, New Hope Coffee is to be available in a number of retail outlets in the state. Until then, it is being test-marketed in a several locations in Rhode Island. It is also available for sale through the American Diner Museum Web site.

Comments: HickeysDiner@AmericanDinerMuseum.org

Building for the Future

2007-11-02T20:21:00.005-04:00

Warwickonline.com

Building for the Future
Written by KERNAN, JOE
Wed, Oct 31 07

A frustration of vocational teaching at the Rhode Island Training School is that sometimes a kid gets all enthused about a trade or skill only to have no place to go when they get out. Pretty soon a diner will be that place.
“You can only go so far,” said Chef William Tribelli, who runs the culinary program at the RITS. “You get the kids in here and then you have them learning something that makes sense and they get excited about it and when they get out, they have no place to pursue it. What we want to do is build a working network where the kids can keep going with something that they want to do.”
Tribelli and Community Liaison for the RITS John Scott have been thinking about that for some time. Scott was preparing for an appearance on The View on ABC as a contestant in a cooking contest about the same time Tribelli’s cookbook, “Jailhouse Cooking,” came out. They both wanted to find a way to pursue their love of cooking, but also to come up with a program that would include the culinary and carpentry students.
“To tell you the truth, I’m not sure who brought up the idea of a diner,” said Tribelli. “But we both came to thinking that restoring a diner would be a great way to interest carpentry students and culinary students.”
That was in 2004 and Scott and Tribelli decided it was not the right time for the project. But then Scott was named Community Liaison and he and Tribelli put together a “business plan.” They took their idea to a receptive administration.
By the time they were finished, they had developed an idea for a full-scale social enterprise that consisted of offering rehabilitation to troubled kids, preservation for historians, a workshop for college business students, a cooking workshop and a revenue-generating enterprise for the state.
All they had to do was to put it all together, and now, after three years of brainstorming, it is actually coming together.
The first thing they had to do was to find a diner.
That’s where Daniel Zilka comes in. As director of the American Diner Museum in Providence, he is always looking for practical ways to save as many threatened diners as he can. A goal of the Diner Museum is to give an old diner a new life by moving it from its threatened location, restoring it and taking it to a new site where it can sustain itself as a thriving enterprise.
“This is a great way to do preservation and help kids learn about history and gain skills,” said Zilka, who delivered several diners to the school and has been their resource person for diners and history. “We already have people who are interested in operating the diners once they are restored.”
The concept of being self-sustaining is also an integral part of the joint venture. Scott and Tribelli envision the diners being an outlet for the students’ efforts and a source of income for the program.
“The idea is to have the program not cost the taxpayers a cent,” said Scott. “We know how tough things are financially and it is important that this pay for itself.”
Tribelli, Scott and Zilka have called their joint venture the New Hope Diner Project and they now have three diners at the school waiting for the renovations that will bring them back to life.
Just outside the gates of the school is the “Louis Diner,” which enjoyed a checkered history of bouncing around northern Massachusetts before settling in Concord, N.H. Now called the New Hope Diner, the Worcester Lunch Car Company built it in 1930. The New Hope Diner will be a culinary laboratory for Tribelli’s culinary students at the school.
Hickey’s Diner, a truck-mounted version of a diner built in 1947 for John F. Hickey Jr. of Taunton, is the first of several defunct diners they will restore while learning an assortment of vocational trades, from metalworking to upholstering. Hickey’s, which belongs to the American Diner Museum, is expected to reopen as a functioning diner in Providence following the restoration.
Mike’s Diner, which used to be near the train station in Providence, will go on the road to promote the project.
“We see Mike’s going to places like the Scituate Art Festival and serving food the kids make,” said Tribelli. “You could generate about $5,000 a day with that.”
But mostly, Mike’s will be a rolling advertisement for the project that Tribelli expects will interest businesses looking for skilled workers who were not aware that the Training School would be a good resource for motivated workers.
“Once you generate an interest in something like this in students, you have to have a place for them to go when they get out,” said Tribelli.
The carpentry shop at the school is rebuilding Hickey’s from the frame up and is keeping the restoration as close to the original as they can. By using the disassembled parts and old photographs, the carpentry students make the components for the frame.
“Right now, we have the metal parts of the frame held together with nuts and bolts,” said carpentry instructor Norm Lambert. “But it was originally held together by rivets, so that is how we are going to do it. Once the frame is coming together, we’ll put in the rivets and peen them over, just like the original.”
Enthusiasm for the project extends well beyond the museum and the school. Zilka found a truck in Bowling Green, Ky., that is identical to the one Hickey’s was mounted on. The truck was shipped to Rhode Island and is now at the automotive department of New England Tech in Warwick being restored with an engine and parts donated by Coletta’s Garage in Providence.
Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse Development Co., which specializes in the restoration of historic sites for commercial development, has donated money to the project. They are interested in possibly having a diner installed in their American Locomotive project in Providence.
New Harvest Coffee Roasters of Pawtucket, dealers in Fair Trade Certified coffee, has already come up with a special organic blend called New Hope Coffee, to be sold at the diner and other outlets.
“They contacted us and we knew from the start that we wanted to get involved,” said Gerra Harrigan, of New Harvest. “We enter into arrangements like this very selectively and we thought this was just wonderful. We couldn’t say no.”
All proceeds from the sale of New Hope Coffee will go to support the diner program.
Bryant University's Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) has agreed to take on the diners as their SIFE Project. They will be developing the business plan for Mike’s Diner and a marketing campaign for the New Hope Coffee line. SIFE forms teams and develops outreach projects in communities that teach market economics, financial literacy, personal skills and business ethics, which will offer yet another resource for Training School students.
Improving job readiness skills, developing leadership skills and providing marketable skills in construction, restoration and culinary and hospitality specialties is the long-range goal of the project.
“We envision the State of Rhode Island, home of the first diner, to be the leader in preserving these important pieces of American History,” said Scott. “The poetry in all of this is that the students of the RITS, a population that society turns away from, is going to save historic structures that society has turned away from.”

Comments: HickeysDiner@AmericanDinerMuseum.org

Please Support the New Hope Diner Project - Purchase New Hope Brand Coffee.

2007-11-01T19:54:00.004-04:00

Fair Trade - Shade Grown - Organic Coffee.

Enjoy a cup of New Hope Coffee!

Your purchase helps provide youth training and employment opportunities through the restoration and operation of historic American diners! In 1872 Walter Scott first offered coffee from his lunch wagon to customers on the streets of Providence, Rhode Island. He unknowingly inspired the creation of an industry that would later become an American icon, the diner. In the entrepreneurial spirit of Walter Scott, the American Diner Museum, in collaboration with the Rhode Island Training School, Bryant University and Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse has been working with a disadvantaged youth population through the restoration of historic American Diners. This collaboration, the New Hope Diner Project, provides educational, vocational and employment opportunities to the youth in the care of the Department of Children, Youth & Families, Division of Juvenile Correctional Services. All proceeds from coffee sales go to the New Hope Diner Project, a self-sustaining program.

Buy New Hope Brand Coffee from our web site: www.americandinermuseum.org

Comments: HickeysDiner@americandinermuseum.org

Diners of the North Shore by Gary Thomas - Louis' Diner

2007-10-28T22:20:00.002-04:00

Photos of Louis' Diner (Rich's Annex Diner) from the American Diner Museum collection can be seen in the book Diners of the North Shore pages 57 to 59 (click link above). Diners of the North Shore covers the history of Massachusetts diners along the North East corner of the State. You can order the book directly from the author.
Gary Thomas
thombrot@comcast.net

WPRI TV - New Hope Diner Project video segment.

2007-10-23T05:06:00.002-04:00

Street Stories: The New Hope Diner Project. Part 2

Bryant University students design a marketing plan
for New Hope Coffee.

Click the link below to watch thanks to WPRI TV:

http://tinyurl.com/3xkrkb

Comment: HickeysDiner@americandinermuseum.org

WPRI TV Friday 10/19 6:15 EST Hickey's Diner Restoration

2007-10-18T13:47:00.000-04:00

Watch the introduction to the program below: New Hope Diner Project. Part 1

http://tinyurl.com/2uubkk

Comment:
HickeysDiner@AmericanDinerMuseum.org

National Public Radio Interview - Restoring Historic Diners and Rebuilding Young Lives

2007-10-11T19:25:00.000-04:00

John Scott of the Rhode Island Training School and Daniel Zilka of the American Diner Museum discuss the New Hope Diner Project.

Click on the link below to listen to the program:

Restoring Historic Diners and Rebuilding Young Lives

by Sara Archambault WRNI (October 11, 2007)
These days, people who don't have time to prepare breakfast at home usually grab something to go on their way in to work. The working class pre-curser to today's fast food restaurants has all but disappeared. There are only 13 diners left in Rhode Island. But some preservationists are hoping to bring a few back with the help of young people serving time.

Comment:

HickeysDiner@AmericanDinerMuseum.org

The Story of : Rebuilding hope, and a bit of local history

2007-10-10T04:00:00.001-04:00

October 1, 2007

Providence Business News

http://www.pbn.com/

Rebuilding hope, and a bit of local history

:By Mary Lhowe
Contributing Writer Providence Business News

Odd as it sounds, there is common ground between old diners in which people once shared coffee, eggs and companionship, and inner-city teenage males labeled wayward or delinquent and incarcerated at the R.I. Training School for Youth in Cranston.

That common ground is a patch of land behind the carpentry classroom at the Training School where the young men are now doing a full-fledged historic renovation of a vintage diner.

Formerly known as Hickey’s Diner of Taunton, it is the first of several defunct diners they will restore while learning an assortment of vocational trades, from metalworking to upholstering. Hickey’s, which belongs to the American Diner Museum, is expected to reopen as a functioning diner in Providence following the restoration.

A second eatery, the former Louis’s Diner of Concord, N.H., will be used by the Training School’s culinary arts program as a class laboratory. A third, Mike’s Diner, formerly located near the train station in Providence, will go on the road to promote the project.

The idea was hatched a few years ago by John Scott, community liaison at the Training School, and Bill Tribelli, a cookbook author and cooking teacher there. The search for their first diner led them to Daniel Zilka, head of the American Diner Museum in Providence and the go-to guy for diner history in Rhode Island.

Zilka liked the idea of having Training School residents rehabilitate the diners and in the process learn vocational trades. He suggested that the school keep one restored diner as a culinary lab, then restore others to sell and put into operation across the state.

They called the project “New Hope.”

“We are dealing with objects and people that have been cast aside; that’s why we like the name New Hope,” said Zilka. “We are giving the students a new hope to have some skills so that when they go back to their communities they can say, ‘I don’t want to steal cars anymore; I want to get a job.’ ”

As the men shared their idea with others, partners began joining the effort:

• New Harvest Coffee Roasters in Pawtucket is designing a coffee blend for a new line of coffee named New Hope, after the project’s name. Proceeds from the sale of the new blend, which will be introduced at the Scituate Art Festival Oct. 6 and 7, will benefit the project. Later, Mike’s Diner may serve and sell the New Hope coffee.

• Members of a club at Bryant University, Students in Free Enterprise, will create a marketing plan for the New Hope coffee line and a business plan for rehabbed diners that may be sold to private operators.

• The R.I. Small Business Development Center at Johnson & Wales University is prepared to help sell the restored diners to private operators. The center can help provide loan assistance and serve as a conduit for distributing the Bryant students’ business plan.

• Developer Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse, which is involved in several large projects in Rhode Island, may place one of the first rehabilitated diners in its American Locomotive Works complex in Providence. Struever also contributed $5,000 to get the new coffee line going and to start the work on Mike’s Diner.

• Students at New England Institute of Technology will soon begin rebuilding a 1954 Chevy truck of the exact model as the original truck that hauled Hickey’s Diner, for future use by Hickey’s.

From the start, Scott and Tribelli insisted on two principles: The project must raise funds to support itself, and it must seek help from people and resources in the community.

The New Hope coffee is an example of a social enterprise, a model in which nonprofit organizations develop and sell products or services to raise money to support their work. An example is Amos House in Providence, a soup kitchen that has created profit-making businesses in school lunch and catering services.

The requirement that the project would depend on community resources is based on Scott’s and Tribelli’s conviction that the young men and women at the Training School are the responsibility of their own families and neighborhoods.

“Kids in the Training School are not the Training School’s kids; they are the community’s kids,” Scott said. “We realized early on that we would need to reach out to the community for partners.”

Along with the major contributors, many others have helped out. In the summer of last year, when work on Hickey’s Diner got under way, people from The Steel Yard in Providence taught the residents how to do ironworking. Soon, Andrew Panciotti, co-owner of Providence Cornice and an expert in metalworking, will help students re-create the copper roof of Mike’s Diner. A paint company has donated paint; an automotive company has donated parts for the 1954 Chevy; a graphic designer donated work on the New Hope coffee label.

“I have never seen so many people from so many walks to life coming together so quickly,” said David Greenan, adviser to the Bryant students. “People are saying, ‘What are you looking for and what do you need?’ It is a collaboration of different segments to society to do something that hasn’t been done.”

“The diner project is small in scale but comprehensive enough to teach all the trades,” Scott said.

“The project teaches history, math skills, vocation training. The idea is that when students are exposed to these trades, maybe they can identify an area of interest for their future.”

“People outside think of the Training School as prison for kids, but we are providing rich opportunities here,” Scott said. “But if we don’t provide marketable skills in the vocations, we are not serving our population.”

Scott said the typical profile of a Training School student is a minority young man about 16 to 18 years old from an inner city neighborhood with fifth-grade level reading and math skills. Most will be at the school about six to nine months. Another teacher said many of the residents have gotten the message in various ways that they were losers, and always would be.

Scott added, “These kids might not have been in circumstances where they ever got a pat on the shoulder. But once they realize what they have done is appreciated, they start taking pride in their work. That might not have happened before.”

In a cooking classroom suffused with the smell of frying bacon, Tribelli, the culinary arts teacher, pointed with pride to photos of former students and their culinary masterworks. “We have kids who have just lost their compass,” Tribelli said. “They come here and we can help turn them around.”

On a recent afternoon, behind the carpentry classroom of the Training School, a couple of students and teachers watched from the ground as, high up on a ladder, a student carefully pried a rotten plank off the side of Hickey’s Diner. In historic renovation, every piece of a structure that is unsalvageable has to be carefully documented and reproduced exactly.

Anthony, one of the program participants watching from the ground, said, “When you take everything off it goes fast; when you put it together, it goes slow.” He said he enjoyed an earlier, mini-project that the students did: reupholstering some restaurant booths that Zilka had come across in his diner research. The booths are now at work in a Chicopee, Mass., restaurant. “The upholstery was fun,” Anthony said. “I would like to go see those booths where they are now.”

Scott said one project partner, Preserve Rhode Island, gave the project a grant that is being used to buy a tool belt and a set of tools for each participating resident when he leaves the Training School “On any job site,” Zilka said, “the first question they ask is, ‘Do you have your own tools?’ These kids can say, ‘Yes, I am ready to work.’ ”