I-195 commission weighs citywide rezoning impact

After Providence rewrote downtown land-use rules two and a half years ago to ease development, the citywide rezoning effort that culminated this month was supposed to be about the neighborhoods outside the central business district.
And while it was, mostly, the final amended ordinance passed by city councilors and signed by Mayor Angel Taveras Dec. 1 includes more potential boosts for downtown and Knowledge District development than initially expected.
Parking minimums, reduced for most neighborhoods in the new zoning ordinance, will be eliminated for new projects downtown, reducing the amount of land needed to build offices or apartments.
And the elimination of residential density limits in commercial and mixed-use zones across the city will include downtown, where some of the greatest potential to use that new flexibility may exist.
Although the number of people living within a particular area will still be limited by building height, setback and other design rules, what had been a 250- square-foot minimum lot area per dwelling unit is no longer an issue.
The number of underutilized properties in downtown means a wide array of potential projects could benefit from the changes, but the former Interstate 195 land in particular may become more attractive under the new zoning.
One change addressing student housing should directly benefit Dallas-based Lincoln Property Co. and Phoenix Property Co. – the one developer the I-195 Redevelopment District Commission has signed a purchase-and-sales agreement with.
City zoning includes a separate category for student dormitories and apartments that allow four or more nonrelated people to live in a single housing unit, instead of three people allowed per unit in nonstudent apartments.
But under the old zoning, the dormitory or student apartment had to be owned or leased by an educational institution to qualify for the four-person rule.
Because virtually all colleges in Rhode Island are government owned or nonprofit, that meant schools either couldn’t take advantage of the exemption, or if they did, the city would lose out on property-tax revenue because the properties would become tax exempt. The new rule requires only the tenants of a student apartment building to be affiliated with an institution of higher learning.
“We want to encourage privately owned student housing, which pays property taxes,” said Robert Azar, Providence director of current planning. “We didn’t think it was appropriate to say these can’t be built by the private sector and have to be leased to or owned by an institution.”
Lincoln-Phoenix, which has agreed to buy a 1.25-acre parcel from the I-195 Commission for $2.7 million, hopes to build a $50 million, 500-bed student apartment building employing a “suites” room model now popular for academic housing.
Being able to put four students in a single suite, which includes multiple bedrooms with shared kitchen and living spaces, instead of three, will increase the rent per-square-foot Lincoln-Phoenix can get from the project.
Since the student housing change only applies to downtown, the apartment building being constructed by Gilbane Development on Thayer Street near Brown University will not be able to utilize it.
That project was also not granted a tax-stabilization agreement, something Lincoln-Phoenix is seeking from the city.
The other major changes for downtown should also help development of The Link, as the former highway lands are being marketed, particularly the elimination of parking minimums.
Lincoln-Phoenix is not planning to build parking on its I-195 project and would need a variance under the old zoning.
The density limits could also be an issue for some I-195 parcels, several of which are small, irregularly shaped and may need density to be economically viable.
But while the new rules appear designed to benefit the I-195 commission, so far at least, it’s not clear whether the state-appointed panel will adopt them.
Under the statute that created it, the I-195 commission is required to enforce the city zoning code of 2012, which was the impetus behind the city rezoning downtown and the Knowledge District that year before amending the code for the rest of the city. At the I-195 panel’s November meeting, John Chambers, senior vice president of community development at Fuss & O’Neill, an engineering consultant for the commission, recommended that the panel adopt the new zoning regulations instead of the old ones, because they contained several changes that would make development of the former highway lands easier.
However, commission member Mark Ryan said the matter could not be discussed because the panel had never been given a promised briefing from staff on what the relevant changes actually were.
“The new zoning does present some opportunities for The Link development,” said I-195 commission spokeswoman Dyana Koelsch in an email. “We are still looking at some of the details beyond these general changes, and it will be discussed in the commission’s [Dec. 15] meeting.”
In particular, Koelsch singled out the elimination of parking minimums, the elimination of the density cap and the changes to the definition of student apartment as potential zoning improvements in the new ordinance.
Perhaps the most obvious item in the zoning rewrite meant to directly benefit downtown development may not actually remain in the ordinance very long.
At the request of a developer looking to build a 17-story hotel and apartment building on the edge of Federal Hill, the City Council initially redrew the zoning map to include his West Exchange Street property in the new downtown district.
The downtown zoning would have allowed a building height of 200 feet at 210 West Exchange Street instead of 90 feet.
But out of concern that the special zoning had not been properly vetted or debated, Ward 13 Councilor Bryan Principe, whose support for the West Exchange provision was key to getting it passed originally, proposed an amendment to take it back out again.
That new ordinance removing West Exchange Street’s downtown zoning was endorsed by a subcommittee and is now pending final passage before the full council. •

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