PPS looks to boost funding, recapture lost momentum: Are developers listening?

REBUILD OR DESTROY? The former Providence Fruit & Produce Warehouse met its fate in 2008 after it was torn down in  response to a demolition order from the city. How will other buildings highlighted by preservation activists fare? / PBN FILE PHOTO/STEPHANIE ALVAREZ EWENS
REBUILD OR DESTROY? The former Providence Fruit & Produce Warehouse met its fate in 2008 after it was torn down in response to a demolition order from the city. How will other buildings highlighted by preservation activists fare? / PBN FILE PHOTO/STEPHANIE ALVAREZ EWENS

(Updated 4:57 p.m.) WHEN David Stem noticed the Providence Revolving Fund sign on the George C. Arnold building downtown two years ago, he thought the structure might make a “cool” project.

Restoring the 1923 building, highlighted for preservation by the Providence Preservation Society on its Most Endangered Properties List between 2010 and 2012, struck him as both appealing and realistic once he followed up with Revolving Fund Executive Director Clark Schoettle, with whom he had worked on reconstruction before.

The ensuing partnership between the Revolving Fund, Stem and his wife and partner, Lori Quinn, resulted in the purchase, a construction loan and ongoing rehabilitation of the unusually narrow building into apartments and retail space. Stem hopes to have the property ready to lease in July.

“We aren’t going to see much of a return on this project for 10 or 15 years, because it costs a considerable amount of money to restore this building,” he said. “[But], I’m going to hold onto it. It’s a good investment.”

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Since 1994, the preservation society has been using its most-endangered list to call attention to properties like the Arnold building that are at least 50 years old and which the public and society staff consider most vulnerable to demolition. Most years the group has produced lists of 10 properties each – 94 properties, districts or neighborhoods to date.

While the Arnold building’s restoration is an apparent success story, many other properties have languished for years on the list or succumbed to the wrecking ball before they could be saved.

The Arnold building is one of six highlighted by the preservation group since 1994 that are being redeveloped. That leaves 34 properties saved, 16 lost and 38 in redevelopment limbo – where some work may be occurring but sites are not yet on track to be saved.

And while five of the 10 properties on the 1994 list have been saved – that success rate has only been matched in one other year, 2003.

So why haven’t there been more success stories, particularly over the last decade?

LOST MOMENTUM

The Great Recession, loss of senior preservation-society staff, curtailing of the state historic-property tax credit program, lack of political leadership and a shift in focus to the most difficult preservation cases all contributed to the lost momentum, say PPS Executive Director Brent Runyon and Paul Wackrow, the group’s director of preservation services.

“The main asset we have is our staff,” Runyon said. “But we don’t have the capacity right now to do a lot of proactive planning. We’re working on developing [that].”

Formed in 1956 in response to demolition challenges in College Hill, the preservation society’s staff, trustees, and about 100 volunteers work citywide to promote preservation, says Runyon.

Since 2000, however, the group has had nine interim or permanent executive directors, including Runyon, a Florida native who came onboard last year.

Fifteen years ago, PPS had a budget of approximately $525,000 and 10 employees. Today it has an operating budget of approximately $450,000 and a four-person staff. Much of the staff’s work revolves around the annual most-endangered list and using it to help develop partnerships like the one that led to the Arnold building’s ongoing rehabilitation.

Despite the cuts to staffing and funding, the group’s yearly focus on 10 preservation cases remains valuable, insist supporters such as Edward “Ted” Sanderson, executive director of the R.I. Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission.

“There are more needs and properties than they can focus on, but it’s helpful to draw the public’s attention to particularly noteworthy preservation issues,” he said. “The [society] doesn’t focus on the easy lifts. They focus on the hard ones.”

Wackrow agreed that the preservation society has begun to focus “a little bit more on building types that might be particularly challenging. Ecclesiastical buildings and houses of worship are examples of buildings that are hard to repurpose.”

Four such properties are on the 2015 list: the Broad Street synagogue, Grace Church cemetery and cottage, the St. Teresa of Avila Church and the Westminster Congregational Church. The latter’s owner, Hood Memorial Church (A.M.E) of Boston, stopped using the building two years ago and has not been reachable despite repeated efforts, he said.

But saving such properties require developers willing to invest and often political support that is sometimes lacking.

The last highly active politician helping “save things” in the city was controversial former Mayor Vincent “Buddy” Cianci Jr., Runyon said, adding that Mayor Jorge O. Elorza is an ally.

The use of state historic-preservation tax credits to help redevelop such properties took a hit when the program for new projects was eliminated in 2008, said Scott Wolf, executive director of Grow Smart Rhode Island, a public-interest think tank focused on sustainable economic growth.

Projects already enrolled were allowed to be grandfathered in, but funding was cut back and higher fees imposed. The program was reinstated with reforms in 2013 with a commitment of $34.5 million, but today there is a waiting list, and Wolf’s organization hopes to see the state replenish the fund and reform it further, he said.

“We’re sympathetic to the list,” said Wolf. “We’re not purists. We don’t think every historic building has to be or can be preserved, but we think there needs to be a lot of protections against hasty or arbitrary demolition of historic buildings. It shouldn’t be a default option. It should be more of a last resort, but sometimes that is the only option.”

When Carpionato Properties, now the Carpionato Group of Johnston, took down the endangered Providence Fruit & Produce Warehouse in response to a demolition order from the city in 2008, fellow developer Joseph R. Paolino Jr. publicly defended the move – and still defends it today.

“Historic is in the eyes of the beholder,” Paolino said. “In my opinion, it wasn’t historic; it was junk. It didn’t have any character to it.”

At the time, Paolino owned and marketed The 903, an adjacent condominium development.

Kelly Coates, the Carpionato Group’s senior vice president for commercial development, believes the most-endangered list does have value, and the company is sensitive to that value, but said the warehouse was not worth saving.

One-third of the property had been demolished to make way for Interstate 95. There had been 18 fires and major portions of the structure had been removed, he said, making the building neither sound nor salvageable. He said he plans to announce a new development at the vacant site this month.

ENDANGERED POSTER CHILD

What Kari N. Lang, executive director of the West Broadway Neighborhood Association, called the city’s “poster child” for endangered properties, the “people’s castle,” built in 1907 and formally known as the Cranston Street Armory, has been on the most-endangered list eight times – most recently, this year.

In January, the preservation society put the armory back on the list after then-Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee last year canceled nearly $3 million in renovations and called for a feasibility study to determine whether and how to repurpose it. The study is not for a specific use but is open-ended, Wackrow said.

“It’s not typical for a property to go on and off the list for so many years,” explained Wackrow. “Different studies for proposed uses … have made it seem like plans were forming, but then they just didn’t move forward.”

Some of the uses that had been considered were a movie studio and a home for the R.I. State Archives, he said. The fire marshal’s office has also moved out, another reason it is on the list, he added.

“It’s a symbol that defines a sense of place in Providence,” Wackrow said, referring to the armory’s value. “There [are] a lot of activities and uses that could take place within a building like that; but it’s a question of what’s sustainable.”

Under Gov. Gina M. Raimondo, about $2 million this fiscal year is now being spent on exterior repair work, the study, windows and fencing – but the property would need $12 million in today’s dollars at a minimum to preserve the exterior, and more if that needed to be spread out over time, said Nami Moghadam, associate director of the R.I. Department of Administration.

Since the state acquired the armory in 1998, it has spent $7.7 million on repairs through 2014, Moghadam said.

Despite progress with some properties that are no longer on the list, like the Dynamo House at South Street Station, where development is being pursued for a nursing school complex for the University of Rhode Island and Rhode Island College and offices for Brown University, some of the endangered properties on the 2015 list are indeed, as Sanderson put it, “hard cases.”

The Kendrick-Prentice-Tirocchi House is one of the projects the preservation society considers to be “in progress” for redevelopment because some state historic tax credits are in place, but there has been a brief hiatus in the work, which is under an active construction contract to stabilize the tower, said Schoettle.

The Providence Redevelopment Agency is actively seeking to buy it, confirmed Executive Director Donald D. Gralnek.

“This building has not been saved, but we are trying to keep it from falling down so we can find a new owner that will save it,” Schoettle said.

A second difficult property to repurpose is the Broad Street Synagogue at 688 Broad St., which the current owner, Joe Triangelo of Trico Development LLC, bought in hopes of revitalizing as a meeting place for the South Providence community or a Jewish deli. Now, he’s trying to sell it.

The site is not just a temple, but has an industrial kitchen, and a large sanctuary. He invested $150,000 in it since buying it in 2014 for $80,000 from Temple Beth Shalom in part because he owned nearby properties and could see that the building wasn’t being cared for, he explained.

After sealing up the roof and getting rid of asbestos and mold, flooring needs replacing and a vandalized heating system has to be repaired. But it was vandalism and public-safety issues that led Triangelo to put the property on the market.

“I gave my word that I would take care of this building, and the conflict I’m having is I don’t feel safe there,” said Triangelo. “It requires businesspeople within the community to come together.”

City Councilor Bryan Principe says the site could be attractive as a cultural center, arts center, winter farmers market or commercial kitchen.

“I’m definitely in favor [of] an effort in getting local people vested in the community to revitalize that building,” he said.

The preservation society is a key player in such relationship-building, but even some supporters would like to see it do more.

DOING MORE

The most-endangered list “is still relevant,” agreed the West Broadway Neighborhood Association’s Lang. “It’s important for people to see this list and these buildings in the city. [But] if each property had an action plan for how to save it, that would be even better.”

Runyon and Wackrow said they do use “advocacy plans” and are planning to add staff who could devote more time and resources to outreach and moving properties permanently off the endangered list. The organization is hoping to grow its $450,000 budget, covered largely by fundraising, by $150,000 over the next three years, Runyon said.

At the preservation society’s 20-year retrospective exhibit in Providence on May 28, Elorza said he’s putting together a working group of stakeholders to help with preservation efforts.

And specific advocacy goals are being developed, Runyon said, including surveying historic districts.

“We’ll be looking at what specific strategies are needed for each [endangered] place and a large part of the tactics we’ll be looking at are things the city can do to help the process,” he added.

“A lot of our focus will be … helping to create advocacy plans for each place, connecting resources and selling a vision to an owner willing and able to carry [it] out,” Runyon said.

Bringing more developers onboard, however, will depend more on the economic potential they see for the future of the endangered properties, rather than their past uses.

Arcade Providence owner Evan Granoff knew the property had been on the most-endangered list, but that was not what motivated him to redevelop it as the retail outlet and apartment building it is today. Its potential for reuse did.

“There are a lot of buildings in Providence that go on the list where there may or may not be any hope for them,” Granoff said. “Putting it on a list doesn’t change the economics of those buildings.

“Bringing attention is good,” he said. “But you’ve got to make it so they pay for themselves.” •

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