Proposals emerge for I-195 land

ALONG THE WATER: Johnston-based Carpionato Group is making a pitch to buy nearly all of the available I-195 land east of Providence River. The rendering above envisions a 563,000-square-foot project with the potential to expand. / COURTESY CARPIONATO GROUP
ALONG THE WATER: Johnston-based Carpionato Group is making a pitch to buy nearly all of the available I-195 land east of Providence River. The rendering above envisions a 563,000-square-foot project with the potential to expand. / COURTESY CARPIONATO GROUP

Addressed one at a time, the 17 buildable parcels uncovered by the relocation of Interstate 195 in Providence will likely take many years to develop.
But Carpionato Group says if the independent state commission that owns the land was willing to sell it in larger chunks, buildings could rise much faster.
The Johnston developer wants to buy nearly all of the I-195 land east of the Providence River and make it the site of a massive mixed-use complex.
“Great cities have great, commonly built projects done by a single developer,” said Carpionato Senior Vice President Kelly Coates, who cited Rockefeller Center in New York as an example. “It’s the only way to make something like this work.”
Carpionato’s $250 million plan for the former highway land stretches from James Street and the foot of a planned pedestrian bridge across the Providence River to Tockwotton Street and the shadow of the current highway overpass.
The $250 million proposal includes apartments, stores, restaurants, offices and laboratory space surrounding a “piazza.” It’s joined to a hotel and more office space on the south side of Wickenden Street by a shop-filled bridge modeled on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy.
In total, the project would be 563,000 square feet with the potential to expand even further to the laborers-union property on South Main Street or the irregular, vacant parcel next to the Exit 2 I-195 off-ramp.
Although the bridge is the flashiest part of the Carpionato design, the lynchpin of the proposal would be buried underground, a 900-space subterranean parking garage to swallow the cars coming to the complex. (An above-ground garage south of Wickenden Street, at Benefit Street, would contain another 200 or so parking spaces.)
Parking has become an increasingly central part of the debate surrounding I-195 redevelopment, with I-195 Commission Chairman Colin Kane arguing that many parcels will be unattractive or unviable for developers without the provision of off-site parking.
There are six separate parcels in the 8 acres on the East Side that Carpionato wants to buy. Not all of them are large enough to support an underground or multilevel garage. By combining the land into a single project, Carpionato executives argue they can build a larger, more expensive parking garage than the owner of any single parcel, thus maximizing development of each corner of the land.
They are also offering to build and maintain the planned riverside park adjacent to the development and pay for pedestrian-friendly, car-slowing improvements to South Water Street.
Still, reaction to the Carpionato proposal, one of two the I-195 Commission received preliminary presentations on last winter, has been lukewarm.
Kane has declined to comment on the merits of the Carpionato plan, but has made it clear the commission intends to market the land and weigh all potential options before making a decision.
“We’re not going to just take the first offer than comes in,” Kane said, adding that the commission’s new executive director, Jan Brodie, just started this week and will soon steer the group’s planning process.
On whether parcel-by-parcel or master-plan development makes more sense on the East Side, Kane declined to speculate.
Since Carpionato and Providence-based Churchill & Banks made closed-door presentations in January, the commission has postponed hearing from other parties that have expressed interest in the land.
Although Churchill & Banks Vice President Richard Baccari II declined to discuss details of his plans for the I-195 land, he confirmed his company’s interest in two parcels Carpionato wants between Wickendon Street and Pike Street and between Pike and Tockwotton Street.
Churchill & Banks owns half of the block between Pike and Tockwotton, site of the building where club Vanity and the headquarters of online payment innovators Swipely are located. Being able to combine the whole block together for parking and infrastructure could be an advantage for Churchill.
Kane said there are “eight or nine” groups with a wide range of proposals that the commission will begin hearing, starting in July. Of that group, only Hecht Development of Massachusetts has been identified. Best known for suburban projects like the Chapel View complex in Cranston, Crowne Plaza Providence-Warwick in Warwick, Offices at Johnston Plaza in Johnston and Middletown Commons in Middletown, Carpionato has so far struggled to break through in Providence.
In 2008, the company tore down the Providence Fruit & Produce Warehouse on Harris Avenue, with plans to build a shopping complex on the land, but the project has gone nowhere.
Pre-recession plans to build a Hampton Inn in Pawtucket and a hotel in the Capital Center area of Providence both stalled.
On whether the I-195 land should be developed piecemeal or in larger chunks, Providence-based urban-affairs analyst Aaron M. Renn said one potential drawback to master-planning is a kind of blandness that sometimes emerges in large superblocks.
“You end up with one kind of personal vision of what happens in these spaces and it can be a little sterile,” Renn said. “A lot of vitality in a city comes from the tension of multiple independent players. When you have one top-down vision, you don’t get that.”
A related issue now being experienced in mid-century shopping malls across the region is the high cost of renovating large master-planned projects when they get old, he said.
Despite Carpionato’s success in the suburbs, Coates said the company’s Providence proposal isn’t for an insular mall complex, but a series of buildings connected to shops on Wickenden Street and South Main Street.
Joe Pierik, Carpionato director of New England territory retail leasing and acquisitions, said his firm has not made a formal offer to the commission for the property, but is willing to pay “fair market value” similar to the amount it appraised for when it was transferred by the R.I. Department of Transportation.
On what will happen if the commission passes on Carpionato’s proposal, Coates said Rhode Island could face decades of fallow land costing taxpayers money instead of generating revenue.
“What if it doesn’t work and each developer is worried about who builds first?” Coates said. “We are ready to go right away. We want to invest in Rhode Island and create jobs.” •

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