RIOC has long privately acknowledged that it is not equipped to handle the leasing of the Main Street storefronts. "There’s no one on staff who is a retail management professional," said RIOC spokesman Bob Liff. "RIOC does not necessarily have the expertise in-house to run the retail [element], and that’s why they’ve gone out for an RFIP," or Request For Initial Proposals.

The RFIP, which calls for responses in March, is designed to attract a broker who can "establish what the market is, do a broad assessment. The goal is to get a quality retail environment, a stable retail environment."

The results of the RFIP could be widely diverse, from a plan for a single broker to act as a mall operator in charge of leasing all the storefronts, to a more individually tailored approach that would use different marketing approaches depending on store size and location. "A broker who comes in with more experience might have some way of determining the market rate, and then you’d have flexibility of what goes where, not necessarily taking only the highest bid. But this is all in process now, and will depend on what we find when dealing with future brokers," said Liff.

That could mean good news down the road for Islanders. It could also mean bad news, however, for the current proprietors. As their leases run out and are not renewed, perhaps in deference to results of this latest RFIP, merchants run the same risk as the fish store: silence for years on end, then sudden eviction.