From Down and Out to Up and Coming

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Downcity Providence is poised to take off as the next urban revitalization success story. It’s been on the precipice for years, receiving steady infusions of hope here and there, but this time advocates say it’s really happening.

“We’re on the cusp of something extraordinary,” says Mayor David Cicilline. City planners, developers and politicians have been diligently putting the puzzle together and are just waiting for the last few pieces to fall in place — comprehensive transportation and the right kind of retail. The biggest, most complicated piece, though, will be to lure the residents in. “Downtown has seen a tremendous transformation over the last four years in particular,” says Cicilline. “Once the residential developments are done, we’ll see a grocery store, a dry cleaner, and everything you need to make it work.”

The area — led by the historic core called Downcity — is showing more than signs of life; it’s a downright resuscitation. More than forty new trendy stores and restaurants have opened in the last three years. Crime is at a twenty-eight-year low in Providence, with major violent crimes down eighteen percent last year, according to The Providence Journal. Developers are forging ahead with plans for new residential towers and hotel rooms, although the luxury condo market does seem to be softening. Cornish Associates, a major Downcity developer, estimates that the one square mile bounded by Smith Street, I-195, the Moshassuck and Providence rivers, and I-95, hosts approximately 30,000 office workers, while the Providence area hosts 30,000 university students and staff per day. Every year the Dunkin’ Donuts Center, the Convention Center and hotels bring in more than 1.7 million visitors.

Still, compared to Boston, downtown Providence is pretty sleepy. After years of public and private investment, the question on everyone’s lips is, “Is Downcity viable?” The answer depends on whom you talk to. Providence Planning Director Thomas Deller says, “We’ve been aggressive in our planning, and we might be a little ahead of the market.” Developers gambling big money on the prospect of a vibrant town center say not only is it viable, its success is inevitable. Locals — famously pessimistic — are sitting back with crossed arms, waiting to watch it fail.

Urban planning experts say downtown Providence has a lot going for it. It has five four-year colleges and universities, numerous arts and cultural attractions such as AS220 and WaterFire, a burgeoning startup-company culture, and some restaurants that rival Boston’s food scene. Once I-195 moves south, the size of downtown will double to include the Jewelry District. But the city’s biggest asset is the beautiful turn-of-the-century American mercantile architecture of Downcity’s historic core, built between the mid 1800s and about 1930, and mostly left alone to age gracefully.
Until the mid-1900s, cities had focused all their economic and social activity in a central downtown area, but the advent of malls, highways and suburbanization pulled business away from places like the department stores of Downcity Providence. Add a steep decline in industrial manufacturing, and many urban areas hit tough times. For Providence, the 1970s were the darkest period in the city’s history. But while other cities were swinging a federally funded wrecking ball at their older neighborhoods to cure an economic ailment, Providence was mostly spared, thanks to early intercession by the Providence Preservation Society to save College Hill from urban renewal. It is now possibly the largest registered historic district in the country.

“It was the first time the federal government had funded a plan that called for the revitalization of a neighborhood in a way other than clearing it,” says Ken Orenstein, former executive director of the Providence Foundation, a private nonprofit that advocates for planning and development issues in downtown.

“The bones are right,” says Massachusetts Institute of Technology urban design professor Dennis Frenchman. “The scale is great. The environment is wonderful. In the end, that’s going to bode very well.”

What is true for fixer-upper homes is even truer for cities. It’s a lot harder to fix a fundamentally ill-designed environment than it is to shine up a good one that’s been tarnished by years of neglect. For years Frenchman has been bringing city design and development students to Providence because, he says, the city has a strong “sense of place,” that quality that makes visitors know they’re in Providence, not Anytown, U.S.A.

“People identify with places where buildings have a sense of history and especially with buildings that are built on a street grid that dates back to Indian times,” says Jack Gold, executive director of the Providence Preservation Society. “The city developed over time. City Hall cost millions of dollars to build. The quality of materials of many mid-nineteenth century buildings downtown is outstanding. We cherish that sense of legacy.”

Avoiding “clear and scar” urban renewal also meant that streets were never widened — an important factor in the scale that Frenchman talks about. Narrow streets and wide sidewalks slow cars down and make it more comfortable for people to stroll. In addition to the space between buildings, the height of the buildings also contributes to a city’s scale. The most desirable height-to-width ratio is different depending on the type of atmosphere you’re trying to create. The effect is known as creating a street room. Dense commercial districts should be at least 3:1, a ratio that is found on Market Street in San Francisco, meaning that it’s thrice as tall (from building to building, including street and sidewalks) as it is wide. Forgettable, suburban strip malls have a ratio of about 1:16. Newbury Street in Boston is 1:2, a cozy street room. Westminster Street in Providence is 2:1.

Exceptionally good bones and neighborhood character are what attracted Cornish Associates’ Arnold “Buff” Chace to Downcity. According to Ari Heckman, director of marketing and retail leasing for Cornish, no one was interested in Downcity when Chace bought his first downtown buildings in the early nineties at auction. He originally planned to develop them as offices with first-floor retail, but the office market was in a slump at the time. In the mid-nineties, Chace sent a crude survey to 1,000 Rhode Island School of Design graduates still living in the area to ask if they’d like to live downtown. Twelve percent said yes. The prospect of residential living in downtown Providence was radical at the time, but Chace pieced together seven layers of financing to rehabilitate the Smith Building and the Packard Building. Cornish now rents more than 200 apartments above retail space in seven historic buildings along Westminster Street. Ninety-six percent are occupied. Monthly rents range from $500 to $3,500 for 750 to 2,800 square feet.

To attract people to a once-dead downtown, there has been an astounding amount of public and private investment in major infrastructure projects, new construction and renovation of historic buildings over the years. Starting more than a decade ago, the city buried the railroad tracks that used to cut through downtown Providence at nineteen feet above the street and built a new train station. Over the next few years, it uncovered and rerouted two rivers and built Waterplace Park, the Convention Center, the Providence Place mall, the Capital Center, and several new apartment towers. It also launched WaterFire, restored the Providence Performing Arts Center, the Trinity Repertory Theater and the Biltmore Hotel, moved a major highway, and completed a $9 million renovation of the central bus hub at Kennedy Plaza, a historic transportation hub that’s been in continuous use since 1875.