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Reservoir Triangle Stop & Shop
Roger Williams Park
Women & Infants Hospital
Allens Ave. Waterfront Development
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The greening of South Providence
Until recently, 17 Gordon Avenue was an idled factory in a blighted neighborhood. Now it's a "factory" for new environmental ideas.
BY KAREN LEE ZINER
Journal Staff Writer | September 26, 2004
PROVIDENCE -- When Nick Fitzhugh, Erich Stephens and Kathy Jellison come to work at 17 Gordon Avenue in South Providence, they park in a porous parking lot that feeds rainwater back underground instead of washing it down the sewers.
Inside, their computers and lights are powered by solar panels. A living roof -- planted with sedum -- will cool tenants in summer and warm them in winter. Carpeting made of recycled fibers lies underfoot, and burbling water sculptures soothe their workday stress.
Where yellow pencils and machine tools once rolled off production lines, entrepreneurs now incubate businesses. Fitzhugh's nonprofit promotes global understanding; Stephens promotes solar and wind power; and Jellison and her three partners work with nonprofit agencies.
Until recently, 17 Gordon Avenue was "a dump," an idled factory in a blighted neighborhood, says Joseph E. Newsome, president of the South Providence Development Corporation.
Broken windows. Burst pipes. Seepage and buckled floorboards. Shootings echoed in surrounding streets, and trash blew unbidden.
But Newsome and a cast of volunteer architects, industrial designers and environmental advocates he aligned envisioned an urban model.
They hoped to create the state's first nonprofit "green and smart" commercial building. They wanted to house a community of businesses where entrepreneurs could share ideas and create jobs for the next generation.
Some Development Corporation board members suggested they were dreaming.
"Everyone was sort of taken aback when we said we were going to create a green building in an urban, distressed neighborhood," says Newsome. "The board really did think this could be a crazy idea."
But they went ahead, and they succeeded. They created the 17 Gordon Avenue Business Incubator, housed in an energy-saving commercial building with "smart" technology, in the heart of South Providence.
BACK IN the mid-1990s, when the SPDC began identifying potential projects, Newsome bumped into Edward F. Connelly, a former labor lawyer who had just left an administrative post at the Solid Waste Management facility -- the Central Landfill in Johnston.
Sitting next to each other at a meeting for nonprofits, the two men began a "Where do you work, what do you do?" conversation.
Connelly said he wanted to start a business "with social and sustainable principles behind it." Watching the trash mount at the landfill, Connelly had been awakened to society's wastefulness and disregard.
"It's one thing to look in your own trash barrel. But when you see the whole state's trash barrels being emptied, you see waste from good materials that are thrown away," he says. "Furniture. Televisions. Fast-food containers to paper napkins and diapers" and other one-time-use products.
Newsome, a former state representative from Elmwood, was also pushing a marriage of economic development and "environmental stewardship."
In ensuing discussions, Newsome asked Connelly whether he had any ideas that might apply to health care, or have hospitals as clients.
"I said health care is going through a big re-examination of their waste systems," says Connelly, "and recycling and waste reduction might work."
Their idea bore fruit as "CleanScape," a recycling operation and for-profit subsidiary of SPDC, located in an old trolley barn at 150 Colfax St., a few blocks from 17 Gordon Avenue.
At CleanScape, they put local people to work, and built a client base that grew to more than 250 customers, among them Rhode Island Hospital, St. Joseph's Hospital, Miriam Hospital, Rhode Island and Providence colleges, and Texas Instruments.
CleanScape recycles cardboard, electronics, computers, pallets, bottles, cans, and plastics. Its workers clean vacant lots in South Providence.
"We provided 30 living-wage jobs for local residents, with health benefits," Connelly says.
AS THEY SCOURED South Providence for reusable buildings before starting CleanScape, Newsome and Connelly came upon 17 Gordon Avenue.
Says Connelly, "We knew it wouldn't work for recycling. But we said, 'Why don't we make this building a green building?' "
As pipes burst and taxes mounted at 17 Gordon Avenue, owner Mitchell Kizirian decided to get out from under, and sold the building to SPDC for $113,000.
Says Newsome, "He said he liked what we were doing in South Providence, and wanted the building to live on as a productive part of the landscape."
As they developed the project, the city backed it with municipal bonds, the State Department of Environmental Management helped finance the porous parking lots, and the state Energy Office helped finance the solar panels.
The federal government gave $1 million -- $150,000 more than SPDC had sought. Newsome says the government liked the idea of a "green" commercial building in a federal enterprise community.
Though there were "little tiny pockets of people around the country and the world who were doing interesting things with sustainable development," says Connelly, few models existed on which to pattern their project.
So they struck out on their own.
"We figured it out by doing it," Connelly says. "We really had a few basic core principles that we wanted to see implemented."
"There needs to be a respect for the people and the places that you're dealing with. There needs to be a concerted effort to improve the livelihood and the lifestyle of everybody that's living around you . . . and that's what we tried to do. That's the genesis of CleanScape. And the genesis of the Gordon Avenue project," he says.
The other point, he says, "is that the people in South Providence deserve to have this type of redevelopment and this type of technology as much as the people any place else. It can't be a class or a social thing. It has to permeate through society."
AT THE OUTSET, Newsome drew together people from different disciplines, and all corners of the state, for a volunteer planning committee.
They came from Brown University, Roger Williams University and the Rhode Island School of Design. They included architects, industrial designers, engineers and people interested in green businesses.
"We hired five architects and set up a learning laboratory to research state-of-the-art green features," Newsome says.
"Joe is a catalyst," says Providence architect Bob Stillings, one of the five architects hired to research green features. Initially a volunteer, Stillings provided the final project drawings for a less-than-market fee.
"He knows a lot of people," Stillings says of Newsome. "I won't say he steps out of the way, because Joe never steps out of the way. But he would sit there, ask strategic questions, and let everybody talk amongst themselves and come up with these things."
Bob Chew, owner of Solar Wrights in Barrington, joined the volunteer committee. He later became a paid subcontractor and installed the 10-kilowatt photovoltaic panels on the roof. (Those panels provide more than enough electricity for the building; the excess is sold to the New England Grid).
Chew, whose background is in environmental science and who started a solar company in 1977, says, "What really intrigued me was they wanted to incorporate a lot of green features -- the green roof, the water storage -- that was pretty neat. And then the recycled carpeting squares, the recycled trim for the vinyl baseboards, the recycled wood . . ."
Erich Stephens, executive director of People's Power & Light ("Rhode Island's nonprofit energy organization"), also volunteered. His company later signed on as a tenant.
Committee members "had different visions and expectations," says Stephens. Those who were more familiar with the green-building concept "might have gotten frustrated or disappointed that it didn't go further."
Lynne Bryan Phipps came to the project to bring "spirit and soul" to the building, and to enhance the experience of the people who work within it.
Phipps, a RISD-educated interior architect, works with Design One Consortium, a firm whose clientele are largely nonprofit corporations "that do good in the community and the world."
Phipps, who is also a United Church of Christ minister, says her specialty is the psychological effect of the built environment. The central question, is what is it like to be a person in the building?"
"What most people don't understand is that productivity is not just linked to how far from the copier you are. It's what you do with color and shape and form, by paying attention to the built environment."
Employee loyalty matters, she says. People want to find meaning in what they are doing, "and if what they do doesn't seem to matter, or organizing the space says nothing [about what they do], then it often doesn't work."
Phipps selected fabrics from Guilford of Maine, a company whose focus is recycled products. She chose grasscloth made of "natural fiber carpet" for the stairs, and rubber base molding made of recycled products.
She chose a green and terra cotta color scheme, "green for its soothing quality. Terra cotta -- the opposite end of the color wheel -- to provide liveliness and a light and contemporary feel."
In the atrium and outside the SPDC office, Phipps located "ambient sound" wall sculptures, whose streaming waters provide a sense of calm.
AS THE WORK continued in February 2003, Mayor David N. Cicilline visited 17 Gordon Avenue to talk with Newsome.
"We sat in the middle of the construction. The drywall hadn't started. There was no heat in the building. And we talked about 'How can we advance this kind of stuff? What role does the government play?' " says Newsome.
"That was a key moment. We shifted into how to market this place, thinking, how are we going to find people with pioneering spirits?" he says.
Newsome says, "This is still considered a weak area of the neighborhood, and not everybody lines up to come here. Even given the amenities of the interior environment" of 17 Gordon Avenue, "it's still a hard sell."
Cicilline says it was difficult to picture the transformation of 17 Gordon Avenue as the work was getting under way. But he says he has known Newsome for many years, "and I had no doubt he would be successful, because he believed so deeply in what he was doing."
THE DRYWALL went up, the paint went on. Tenants began moving in.
The Glimpse Foundation (www.glimpsefoundation.org), created by a Brown student to promote worldwide cultural understanding, was one of the first. Nicholas Fitzhugh, president of Glimpse Foundation and publisher of Glimpse Quarterly, and Kerala Goodkin, foundation secretary and Glimpse Quarterly editor-in-chief, rent a one-room, 433-square-foot office.
Besides their office, and dependable heating and air conditioning, "we have shared conference rooms," Fitzhugh says. "Everything is pre-wired. There's a mailroom and loading dock. And being able to get all that for $1 per square foot -- our overhead is so low."
Fitzhugh is also pleased that Glimpse "has been able to be in a community of other start-up businesses" that convene for a monthly tenants' meeting.
Glimpse's next-door neighbor is the nonprofit People's Power & Light.
"This seemed like a great fit. It's so much in line with our mission. We wanted to just really walk the talk," says executive director Erich Stephens, who was on the original volunteer committee.
"It's really worked out well, because the people who come to visit us are interested in what the building is about as well. The space itself is excellent," Stephens says.
Kathy Jellison, principal of Partners Consortium, LLC, says she and her three partners, Jennifer Davis-Allison, Marianne A. Cocchini, and Harriet Eiter, "stepped one foot across the threshold at 17 Gordon Avenue and knew we were home."
Says Jellison, "It has the same sort of value systems that really resonated with us -- in terms of being collaborative in nature . . . in terms of good stewardship, good use of the land, and recycling." She finds the natural light "conducive to creative energy, which is what the building is about."
The four women also like the South Side location. "All of our clients -- many had not been to the South Side before or thought of it as a conference locality."
"The folks who come here go, 'Oh, wow!' " Jellison says. "It's really lovely. We feel really proud to be here."
WORKERS GIVE the roof its crowning touch on a mid-September day, beneath a smudged gray sky that threatens rain -- perfect for planting. Three employees of CleanScape dig their trowels into several inches of soil that has been spread on rubber membrane, and plug green succulents into the holes. By 10 a.m. the men have planted hundreds of them; they have several thousand more to go.
From the rooftop you can see the red vacant building with busted windows across the street that is now owned by the Providence Health Centers. Using 17 Gordon Avenue as a template, that building is about to undergo a transformation.
All it takes, Newsome says, is vision, financing and a lot of elbow grease to set the domino theory in motion.
"From one building [has come] the catalyst of change and the empowerment," says South Providence Councilwoman Balbina Young. "That one decision by the SPDC board, and Joe Newsome saying 'We can do this,' has blossomed into some nice things for this community."
'Green' houses open their doors
The 17 Gordon Avenue Business Incubator is among a number of "environmentally friendly" buildings that will be open during the annual Green Buildings Open House on Saturday, Oct. 2. The tour is part of American Solar Energy Society's National Solar Tour.
Free tours of area homes and businesses will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The tour is designed to educate consumers about green building, safe indoor air quality and renewable energy.
Buildings include examples of geothermal heat, solar electric power and water systems, energy-efficient windows, insulation and "green" building materials.
The buildings are private residences, unless otherwise noted:
Coventry: Apeiron Institute for Environmental Living, 451 Hammond Road.
Cranston: 42 Tremont St.
Hope Valley: 19 Crouther's Place.
Providence: 17 Gordon Avenue, and Fields Point (Save the Bay's new Explore the Bay Education Center).
Wakefield: 40 Oak St.
Westerly: 1 Dennis Court
Wickford: 2 Loop Drive.
The New England Sustainable Energy Association organizes the Green Buildings Open House event regionally to promote the benefits of green living. For details about the Rhode Island houses and businesses, visit www.nesea.org, or call (413) 774-6051.
From The Providence Journal
