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[Cotuit]

Downtown on a roll
After years of delay, things are starting to gel in Providence’s old retail core
BY IAN DONNIS

FOR SOME CASUAL observers, the old retail core of downtown Providence probably appears much as it has for the last decade: for all the bursts of activity at PPAC, Lupo’s, Trinity Rep, and other attractions, a quiet lull still frequently settles over the streets. And for all of the talk of remaking downtown as a residential neighborhood, not to mention the architectural beauty of the well-preserved 19th and early 20th century buildings lining Westminster and other nearby streets, there’s still a sense of unrealized potential, of a great enterprise still waiting to begin.

In fact, the long-sought reinvention of downtown — which has unfolded at a glacial pace since becoming a topic of serious discussion in the early 1990s — is quickly gathering momentum. The boom of the giant construction crane towering above the Peerless Building, where 97 apartments will double the number of downtown units, to a much-touted critical mass of 200, when renovations are completed next spring, suggests the magnitude of the change. The arrival of nearly 500 Rhode Island School of Design students, slated to move into new housing in the old Hospital Trust bank building in the fall of 2005, will deliver even more vitality.

Although vacant storefronts still fleck downtown, a handful of new shops — ranging from Garrison Confections and Lumiere salon to Symposium Books, a serious bookstore with deep discounts — represent the vanguard of a retail strategy being implemented by developer Arnold "Buff" Chace’s Cornish Associates. Two Federal Hill restaurants, L’Epicureo and Gracie’s Bar and Grille, are heading downtown, the former into Stanley Weiss’s forthcoming boutique hotel on Mathewson Street, and the latter into the vacant Players Corner space on Washington Street, and tentative plans are afoot for more downtown dining destinations. Making the hop on Westminster between tazza caffe and the Providence Black Repertory Company’s stylish Xxodus Café (disclosure: I’m a member of the PBRC’s board) has become a popular Thursday night ritual.

Meanwhile, Travelers Aid, which offers housing and other services to the needy, is scheduled to relocate to the former YMCA building on the other side of I-95 in mid-August, removing a perceived drag on development. Chace, whose firm has charted the residential transformation of downtown, plans to raze the existing Travelers Aid structure on Union Street, replacing it with a 400-plus-space parking garage tucked behind more retail space and 35 to 45 additional residential units. Making a success of the structure, described by Chace as a prototype of the remedy required for a shortage of downtown parking, will necessitate nothing less than turning Weybosset into a two-way street.

It wouldn’t be surprising if this welter of activity stirs still additional development, perhaps even on some of the surfeit of surface parking lots that have attracted the ire of urban planner Andres Duany. Former mayor Joseph R. Paolino Jr., whose family firm, Paolino Properties, along with Chace and Weiss, is among the largest downtown property owners, already says he is "in the middle of a major plan right now that I think will add greatly to the skyline of Providence." He declined to elaborate.

A city report, Providence: Investing in America’s Renaissance City, places downtown development in the context of $2 billion in planned construction in the city from 2002-2009.

This pending revitalization isn’t without its critics, not least because of Rhode Island’s skyrocketing housing prices, and the disparity between the earlier conception of a downtown arts district and the evolution of a neighborhood geared more toward professionals and comfortable retirees. The median rent in Cornish’s Alice Building, for example, hovers near $1450, although eight of 36 units in the Smith Building are affordable and some other Cornish properties feature less costly prices. Chace, citing diversity among age, income, and ethnicity, points to a general price of $1 per square foot, although, he acknowledges, "At the end of the day, we failed in achieving rents that were broadly attractive to the arts community."

Similarly, the likelihood of a downtown business improvement district — in which businesses and institutions will contribute toward the cost of services, like cleanliness and safety, which are part of the city’s responsibility — raises images for some of a strangely antiseptic and regulated Providence. Indeed, after a handful of urban settlers spearheaded efforts in recent years to restrain Providence nightlife, its only reasonable to wonder what all this means for downtown. Even some of those sympathetic to the Safari Lounge (whose supporters bought a full-page ad in the Providence Journal, asking "Whose Renaissance? Planned economy threatens real community," when Weiss tried to oust it in 2000) suspect the handwriting on the wall for the venerable dive bar.

Considering the changing landscape, it’s fortunate that some of the less glitzy downtown arts institutions, particularly AS220, Perishable Theatre, and the Black Rep, own their own buildings. Yet even Chace, who comes from money and seems largely motivated by the New Urbanist concept of reinvigorating an urban center, and who has long touted Washington Street as the logical location for nightclubs (a mission accomplished with the relocation to the Strand of Lupo’s) cites the ridiculousness of a quiet urban neighborhood. "It is the nature of living in the downtown to have more noise than living in the neighborhoods," he notes. "I do think there would be nothing worse than having a boring downtown. That would kind of defeat the purpose."

There will always be those who yearn for some supposed golden era of Providence’s past. But if it’s a choice between maintaining an underutilized downtown and bringing more vitality to the district, it hardly seems like a real comparison.

It’s telling that the Reverend Jonathan R. Almond, pastor of the Mathewson Street United Methodist Church, which has been located downtown for 150 years and caters to the needy with a food bank and weekly community meal, sees downtown’s residential reinvention as a good thing. Although the reverend clearly shares the concern about the general lack of affordable housing in the state, the downtown changes are making the area cleaner, safer, more accessible, more complex, and more appealing, he says. And it’s not as if relocating Travelers Aid across the highway will make the poor disappear, although they may be more dispersed. As Almond notes, indigents will make the walk between Kennedy Plaza and Travelers Aid’s new location, and the growing number of downtown residents will add to the overall level of street life throughout the day.

Almond says he has never feared for his safety during his 11 years as pastor at Mathewson Street, although the broader perception used to be that downtown was unsafe. The changing view over time has made possible a wider variety of uses, he says, ranging from the sound and sight of young children and student teachers at URI’s downtown campus singing songs and holding hands to a church-based collaborative program for people living with AIDS. "Fifteen years ago," Almond says, "that couldn’t have happened."

IT BEGAN with an idea.

In the early ’90s, Buff Chace decided to redevelop a strip mall owned by his family in Mashpee, Massachusetts, as a traditional New England town center, rather than aiding and abetting the spread of sprawl on Cape Cod. The process led him into conversation and then friendship with Andres Duany, the Miami-based urban land planner, and the realization that downtown Providence offered an underutilized, yet intact, traditional New England town center seemingly ripe for reuse.

In 1992, Duany came to town for the kind of planning session known as a charette, and an initial downtown revival plan focused on specialty retail. "If you remember in those days, you had to go to Warwick to buy your underwear," Chace recalls. The vision fell apart, though, as plans proceeded for what would become the Providence Place Mall.

A second charette, in 1994, emphasized housing, especially for artists. The 12 percent response rate from mailing lists of RISD alumni and the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts suggested a willingness of people to live downtown, and the effort attracted institutional support. Costs relative to the income were higher than the project could bear, though, leading Cornish to push for the historic tax credit. In a culture where development is based on a certainty of short-term profit, banks were reluctant to take part. It didn’t help, of course, that Chace was pursuing something more akin to a European style of development.

Although the idea of breathing fresh life into the city held appeal, he says, "Whether it was the right thing from a business perspective . . . is a queFstion mark." Asked about the profitability of the residential developments, Chace says, "They won’t be profitable by themselves unless they create positive momentum that makes the whole district a more attractive place." Although success remains uncertain, not least because proponents believe a West Warwick casino would sap an important amount of attraction from downtown Providence, Chace remains optimistic.

Some progress came with the opening of the 36-unit Smith Building, Chace’s first residential project, in 1999. Yet for all of former mayor Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci Jr.’s talk about the downtown arts district, the only artists living downtown were generally those at AS220. A lingering dispute between Chace and Rich Lupo over Lupo’s tenancy in the Peerless Building, seen by proponents as the linchpin of downtown development, not to mention the high cost of rehabilitating old buildings, did little to further the cause. Nor would the downtown property owners go to an intermediate step — rough spaces with artist-friendly rents, for example — that would have speeded the residential transformation of downtown.

Things started to change when Rhode Island several years ago adopted a historic tax credit, based on a model in Missouri, which allows developers to recoup up to 30 percent of the cost of redeveloping a historic property. In another major development, Lupo and Chace resolved their differences late last year, paving the way for Lupo’s relocation to the Strand and the redevelopment of the Peerless. The opening of the Alice Building followed, with 38 units in December 2003, and the development of the Burgess, O’Gorman, and Wilkinson buildings, which Chace had bought from the Paolinos. Cornish also dedicated a floor-level space on Union Street to a cooperative gallery, The Space at Alice.

The current sense of momentum pleases downtown residents like Maria Ruggieri, a jewelry designer who moved into the Smith Building about five years ago from Pawtuxet Village. "It’s going to be like night and day," says Ruggieri, who serves as president of the recently formed Downtown Neighborhood Alliance. "The Peerless is really the cornerstone of all the residential living downtown." As far as the neighborhood’s evolution, "It just needs a little more time, I really believe that."

THEQUESTIONNOW becomes, how will the fledgling residential growth of downtown affect the area?

For Francis X. Scire, who’s pursuing the retail marketing plan for Chace’s Cornish Associates, the hope is that the growing number of residents will complement his efforts to bring a flavorful mix of consumer attractions. His goals include a shoe store, a fresh green grocer, a fresh wrap and go kind of place, "edgy, funky retail," perhaps shops with flowers, new and used music, videos, vintage clothing, and home furnishings — "a flavorful neighborhood [that] isn’t just an upscale Newbury Street." Scire, who touts the far lower rental cost for retail space in Providence than Boston or New York, with an audience of 40,000 office workers, cites his objective as "eclectic with variety that caters to a variety of types and people."

Symposium Books, located on Westminster Street, near the Peerless, delivers on this promise. With an intellectual bent and appealing prices (The Zinn Reader for $10.98 and Mike Davis’s Ecology of Fear for $8.98, for example), the store seems a welcome addition. "We thought that the city needed a store like this," says co-owner Anne Marie Keohane, who came to town with her husband from New York to launch the enterprise. The response has been positive, she says, although the small number of people browsing on a recent mid-day suggests the need for more customers. Says Keohane, "We’re just anxious to see [the increase in the number of downtown residents] happen sooner, rather than later. This is a risk."

As far as the pending influx of new residents and students, "Two years from this, we’re going to look back at this and we’re not going to recognize downtown," says Bert Crenca, AS220’s artistic director. Although a lot of AS220’s constituents question the upscale lean of the residential development, "These buildings have been unoccupied for an awful long time," Crenca notes. The pending arrival of more downtown residents is a positive thing, he says, and the need for historic tax credits and risk-taking on the part of bankers and developers indicates the difficult of carrying off the long-discussed residential vision. (AS220 is in discussion with Johnson & Wales University to remake the former Dreyfuss Hotel Building on Washington Street, Crenca says, with studio and affordable residential space for artists.)

Crenca sees Providence benefiting in the big picture from downtown’s evolution. In his mind’s eye, he sees out-of-town visitors coming for a weekend visit, complete with culture, late-night entertainment (if city fathers would give Duany’s suggested 4 a.m. nightlife closing a try), and a stop at the RISD Museum. "People are doing it now," he says. "We get people from all over New England for the Fools’ Ball." But if the city pursues a 1 a.m. closing time and other reactionary tactics, he says, it will have the opposite effect, driving away potential visitors.

Lupo, who says things are going pretty well in his new location at the Strand, nonetheless notes that the national live music business isn’t exactly thriving these days. "I wish City Hall and the State House would embrace the nightclubs, and especially live music venues as integral parts of the downtown environment," he says. "Right now, I think we’re being viewed more as enemies than friends."

For her part, Kim Snow, a 30-year-old Alice Building resident and secretary of the Downtown Neighborhood Alliance, relishes the polyglot eclecticism of downtown. "The reason I live downtown is because it’s fun and it’s loud and it’s social," she says, citing the ease with which she can walk to AS220, Murphy’s, the Red Fez, tazza, and other destinations. "I’d hate for the residential presence to pull that back in any way."

ASKED ABOUT top needs, downtown residents typically mention a supermarket and more parking.

Buff Chace and Thomas Deller, Providence’s director of planning and development agree on the need for several thousand more downtown parking spaces, but the path to achieving this goal remains uncertain. Chace calls for a public-private partnership to replicate the kind of garage that he and two relatives, Kim and Liz Chace, plan to build on the Travelers Aid site. The garage will offer about 200 spaces for downtown residents, and the remainder for shoppers. "We’re competing with free parking in the suburbs," Chace notes. "We don’t have enough on-street spaces to support thriving retail." Deller agrees on the need for the parking, but says it remains to seen how it can be done. Developers, he says, have "got to come in with a clear ask."

On a more profound level, with the relocation of Interstate 195 opening more land, planners to hope to see downtown Providence connected more closely with surrounding neighborhoods, particularly the Jewelry District, Old Harbor, Capital Center, and the West Side. The city last week awarded a six-figure contact to Sasaki Associates to create a new vision for more closely linking these discrete areas. "I think we are at the beginning of a major transformation," Deller says, although the question remains of whether the city will be able to take the next step.

From The Providence Phoenix

[Cotuit]

John Kostrzewa: GTECH is only part of the new downtown
December 12, 2004

Two events occurred back to back this month that will have a lot to say about the future of downtown Providence.

One of them, under a big, white tent in the middle of the Capital Center district, attracted wide media coverage and most of Rhode Island's movers and shakers.

The other, on a dimly lit street in the city's core, got almost no attention. Long term, however, it may become more important to the financial health of the state's capital city. More on that later.

The event under the tent celebrated the start of construction of GTECH's new $80-million world headquarters on a vacant lot across from the Providence Place mall.

You may question the modern design that fights with the surrounding architecture, or the incentives that state and city taxpayers gave away to get GTECH to move downtown, but there's no questioning its economic impact.

The new, 12-story building will employ 500 mostly white-collar workers who will now spend weekdays in the city.

Bruce Turner, president and chief executive officer of GTECH, told federal, state and city leaders who gathered under the tent that government and corporate leaders from around the world will now travel downtown to do business with GTECH. They will rent 7,000 rooms a year at local hotels.

GTECH's employees and visitors will shop, eat, spend money and spur more development downtown. Plans already call for using most of the first floor of the headquarters for new restaurants, adding to Providence's reputation as one of the best places in New England to go out to eat.

In his remarks to the crowd, Governor Carcieri said the GTECH headquarters would create a new center in the city for commerce and people.

A few blocks away, other developers and city leaders who spent the previous night at an event in Downcity, an older section of downtown Providence, might have argued that point.

They organized an early-evening walk down Westminster Street, after the traditional lighting of the Christmas tree on the City Hall steps, to show off the new businesses, including a snazzy cafe, nightclub, craft store, hair salons, art gallery and bookstore.

The key to the development is the loft-style apartments and condominiums being created in the 19th-century mercantile buildings.

Several projects are under way in buildings once occupied by Peerless, Woolworth and other department stores that shoppers will recall from the old days. There's also the Hotel Providence being completed and L'Epicureo, the Federal Hill restaurant that is relocating to Downcity.

Those projects will draw new residents into the older downtown. They'll include not just the college students and artists who now populate the arts and entertainment district, but young professionals and baby boomers now in their 50s and 60s who are looking for a change of lifestyle as they get ready to retire.

All those people will live and work 24 hours a day in the city and bring new vitality, but it won't be the same as the days when holiday shoppers flooded downtown to spend money at Peerless, the Outlet and Shepard's.

However, there is a hint of new retail that is following the people into the city. Design Within Reach, a San Francisco-based purveyor of high-style home furnishings, has committed to locate its first store in a medium-sized market in the middle of the activity on Westminster Street. What the district now needs is a grocery store, a pharmacy, more retailers and restaurants and nearby parking -- all privately financed without taxpayer subsidy -- to turn it into the mixed-use urban village that developers dream about.

Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline attended the events under the GTECH tent and Downcity, where he stood in front of one of the new businesses.

"Thanks for coming," Cicilline told each of the small number of people who took the walk. Four elderly women attended the tree lighting and took the mayor's invitation to visit Westminster Street. When they turned the corner from Dorrance and looked down the street where they had shopped years before, they asked, "What's going on down here?"

From The Providence Journal