JWU plans new business, tech school buildings

COURTESY JWU
URBAN EXPANSION: Johnson & Wales University’s new master plan calls for between six and eight new buildings, shown in orange above, to be constructed over the next 10 years in Providence.
COURTESY JWU URBAN EXPANSION: Johnson & Wales University’s new master plan calls for between six and eight new buildings, shown in orange above, to be constructed over the next 10 years in Providence.

A new business-school building is at the heart of Johnson & Wales University’s latest downtown-campus expansion plans, which also include a new technology-school building, dorms and offices.
The planned business school, one of up to eight new structures in a revised master plan that also includes major renovations on the campus, would be located at the corner of Chestnut Street and Friendship on land that used to include a piece of the former Interstate 195.
The new 80,000-95,000-square-foot building is expected to take a year to design and up to 16 months to build, according to Johnson & Wales Vice President of Facilities Management Christopher Placco, who said the school hopes to be ready to start construction once work rebuilding the street grid for the I-195 land is finished. In addition to classrooms, it will include a lecture hall and first-floor retail and café space.
After the business school, Placco said Johnson & Wales intends to renovate the Xavier Academic Complex on Pine Street before building a new 45,000 to 65,000-square-foot technology-school building on the opposite end of the block that will house the new business school.
The technology school is now using a former retail space on Mathewson Street that would be sold.
The new master plan slims down and realigns a 10-building master plan drawn up in 2008 that used 4 acres of I-Way land, including the valuable 2.3-acre Parcel 35 that stretches from Claverick Street to Interstate 95.
“It allows us to complete the urban university with a strong sense of identity, very clearly demarked as a university within the city,” Placco said.
Like it did in 2008, Johnson & Wales still hopes to create a second quad for the downtown campus – this time at Pine and Claverick instead of Parcel 35 – and connect with green space school buildings now isolated among surface parking lots. The university’s greatest need is for additional classroom space.
Right now, over 90 percent of total classroom space is being used during peak periods, much higher than most colleges where the utilization rates sit between 60 and 70 percent.
“This will bring a lot of new students into the city where they will be renting apartments, buying clothing and going to restaurants,” Placco said.
Construction of the first stage of the plan, a new six-level, 800-space, faculty-student parking garage on what is now a surface lot at Richmond and Pine streets, is expected to begin as early as this fall.
At the same time, Johnson & Wales is searching for the future location of its new physician-assistant program before students start classes in the summer of 2014.
Johnson & Wales needs 20,000 square feet for the physician-assistant program and has identified a building abutting the former highway land that would fit, but has not decided whether it will be the best option.
Sasaki Associates Inc., a Watertown, Mass. consulting firm that has been working on Johnson & Wales’ master plan since 2008, is scheduled to come back to Providence to discuss the physician-assistant space this spring.
The vacant lot at Chestnut between Pine and Friendship, where Johnson & Wales will build either a physician-assistant program or a new student center, is “an incredible site” that will tie together the existing Weybossett-centered buildings with the new string of buildings planned toward the west, Placco said.
Taken as whole, the biggest changes to the new Johnson & Wales master plan compared with the old 2008 design reflect the shifting priorities and objectives of the I-195 redevelopment project.
The university’s 2008 plan assumed that Parcel 35, one of the most desirable out of the 20 acres of Jewelry District land freed up by moving the highway, would be available if the school wanted it. Since then, the highway has come down and an independent commission has been given the authority to sell the land. Johnson & Wales had to account for the possibility that it wouldn’t be able to acquire Parcel 35.
At the same time, the city’s plans to restore the street grid have also changed.
Initially, Claverick Street was going to be entirely rebuilt, separating land between Pine and Friendship that Johnson & Wales now owns. But after further consideration, city planners now don’t think it’s necessary to reconnect all of Claverick, Placco said.
With their land left intact, Johnson & Wales now has more space to put the technology building on Pine Street and won’t have the prospect of cars needing to avoid students trying to get to and from class.
After the garage, physician-assistant building, business school, technology school and Xavier renovations are done, the last pieces of the plan are to build new faculty-office buildings and new dorms along the western end of Friendship Street.
Those projects are likely five or more years away, Placco said, and as a result their exact shape and size are less clear than the rest of the buildings.
In addition to the changes to the Claverick Street rebuild, the other development that has allowed Johnson & Wales to move forward was an agreement reached with Providence Mayor Angel Taveras in February to nearly triple the school’s current payment in lieu of taxes in exchange for the two I-195 parcels where the business and technology buildings will go.
If the university does eventually buy Parcel 35, its payments to the city will increase further under the deal struck with Taveras. •

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