Stop Wasting Abandoned Property Inc.’s mixed-use Southside Gateways development on Broad Street is intended as a neighborhood-grounded project, a place where local businesses could invest in quality, low-priced space with low-income apartments upstairs.
The building – 48,000 square feet with colonial styling and crisp paint that stands out in the neighborhood – fronts Broad Street, adjacent to Grace Cemetery and Trinity Square, where Elmwood Avenue and Broad meet.
Because of its on-the-square location at 500 Broad St., the building is also intended to signal a shift toward neighborhood unity in an area that has its share of derelict buildings and crime, SWAP Executive Director Carla DeStefano said earlier this month. Standing recently on the sidewalk along Broad Street, she pointed back into the public walkway that runs through the ground floor of the building.
“There is a lot of foot traffic in this neighborhood. You can see today, even though it’s very cold, that there are people walking out here,” she said on a recent sunny, winter day. “This was about opening up walking commerce in the neighborhood … [and] allowing people to pass right through here into the courtyard and into the neighborhood.”
The development got its start in 2004, when the city of Providence put out an RFP seeking a buyer for the commercial-and-residential zoned property, which it then owned. SWAP bought the property and brought in architects Robert Stillings and Martin Ezeama to design the building. Because of the zone that the project is in, the building had to front Broad Street, with storefronts off the sidewalk, and the parking lot had to be hidden in the rear.
For SWAP, a nonprofit that focuses on residential renovations, the project was its first large-scale step into commercial development. It had previously developed 1029 Westminster St., a small-scale, mixed-use project. DeStefano said SWAP has invested about $60 million in the Elmwood and South Providence neighborhoods over the years. The nonprofit will be 35 years old in 2010.
The $14 million Southside Gateway development was difficult to finance, DeStefano said. SWAP eventually used a combination of bank financing for the commercial space and federal and state incentives, including federal Low Income Tax Credits for the residential space. And the commercial space originally had been planned as leased space, but the city asked SWAP to consider selling them as business condominiums.
“They came to use and suggested that there are a lot of small businesses that are located on the south side of the city, primarily along Broad Street, who pay rent and aren’t building any equity and don’t have a vested interest in their buildings,” DeStefano said.
SWAP’s commercial space is priced from $111,500 to $215,000, and Deputy Director Linda Weisinger said a 30-year mortgage would likely cost between $1,000 and $1,500 per month.
“As it turns out,” DeStefano added, “many of the businesses along Broad Street were paying more each month than they would be if there were to buy one of these condominiums.”
Since its late-summer completion, a cell phone supply store – Primetime Communications – has opened in the development. And SWAP and Amos House are co-opening a café, Friendship Café, in an adjacent space this spring.
Even with nine spaces – ranging from 800 square feet to 1,540 square feet – left to rent, DeStefano was confident that it wouldn’t take much longer than a year to fill the space.
Now, the lending market is much tighter than it had been when SWAP started the project, but DeStefano said she still expects the commercial space to be filled within a year. “Businesses are a little skittish,” she said. “Traditional financing is very challenging right now for everybody. … As many businesses as there are that are interested, they still have to go get financing to get into the building. And that has been a challenge for some of the businesses.”
Weisinger, who is in charge of showing the space, said she’s still seeing interest and gives a prospective buyer a walkthrough at least once a week.
Conversely, the 35 residential one-to-two-bedroom apartments on the second and third floors were fully occupied as soon as the development was completed. There’s now a waiting list of more than 1,000 people, DeStefano said.
For the commercial space, DeStefano said she and Weisinger are specifically targeting the types of businesses that neighbors have asked them to bring in. At a predevelopment meeting, the neighborhood told SWAP that it wanted a bank, dry cleaner, fitness center and café, “and there was a resounded feeling that there be no alcohol served in any of the buildings,” DeStefano said.
The Broad Street project is only the first step in what DeStefano said will be a revitalized Trinity Square. For that reason, SWAP has left one of the commercial spaces open for community events and resident get-togethers. The Center for Women and Enterprise held a meeting there a few weeks ago. And SWAP is planning a similar commercial project – now being called simply the “Trinity project” – that will be connected to the Southside Gateway by a path through the Trinity Cemetery.
“That building, on Elmwood Avenue, goes up four stories, so it’s really going to change the landscape here, literally,” DeStefano said, standing on Broad Street. •
