RISD leases full Moshassuck Square

The Boston real estate firm that bought the Moshassuck Square Apartments in Providence this winter has signed a master lease for the 122-unit complex with Rhode Island School of Design, which says it plans to use the apartments mostly for graduate student housing.
The Mount Vernon Co. bought the landmark property in March for $10 million from Picerne Real Estate Group, which had owned it for 25 years. At the time, Mount Vernon founder and chairman Bruce A. Percelay said he planned an extensive upgrade, and that he viewed the acquisition as the first step in a “major expansion” into this market.
Brian Janes, RISD’s director of residence life, said Mount Vernon had approached the school about two months ago to discuss a possible master lease.
“We were looking around at various options for additional housing,” he said. “Mount Vernon has similar arrangements with other colleges in the Boston area, so the company is familiar with the need and how it works.”
While current Moshassuck Square tenants will not be displaced, their leases will not be renewed, according to a news release from Mount Vernon. About half of the units will be available for the coming school year, and all will be available by August 2008, Janes said – though a few “very long-term” tenants might stay on.
The apartment complex, near the intersection of Charles and North Main streets, will provide students “the ability to rent at one central East Side location, which will help to address a housing crunch that RISD has been struggling to solve,” the release said.
Janes said that the Moshassuck Square apartments will be used for graduate students and upperclassmen, with some students sharing space with their partners. He said that with 139 bedrooms, about 150 students will be housed in the complex.
“Having a central location to consolidate our students’ off-campus housing requirements will be a great asset to them and will relieve housing pressure in the College Hill neighborhood and in other parts of the city,” said RISD president Roger Mandle in the release.
Janes said the demand for student housing continues to escalate, and RISD has experienced a steady increase in the number of graduate students over the past decade.
“We hope to really target this particular facility to meet the needs of our graduate students,” he said, adding that the apartments might also be offered to older undergraduates.
As the first off-campus housing complex with parking available through RISD, Janes said, Moshassuck Square will be “a more adult-like community.”
The need for centrally located housing is not new to the school. One big improvement came when RISD took over 15 Westminster St. downtown, the former Rhode Island Hospital Trust building, and turned the upper floors into its largest residence hall ever, for 500 students. (The first floor, an ornate banking hall, has since become RISD’s new library.)
Opened in 2005, “15 West” represented “a 65-percent increase on a campus that was previously able to accommodate only 790 of its 2,300 students,” according to the RISD Web site. For the first time in the school’s history, more than half of its students were living in campus housing.
But this relief was short-lived, according to Janes. “The 15 Westminster building provided about one year of housing relief, and we had a waiting list again,” he said.
The Moshassuck Square Apartments should go a long way toward meeting RISD’s needs, Janes said, and the school is not currently looking at leasing more space in the area.
In the Mount Vernon news release, Mayor David N. Cicilline called the master lease “a win-win agreement that is also a win for the City of Providence.”
“It alleviates a housing shortage for RISD students,” he added, “and assures full, long-term occupancy of the Moshassuck Square Apartments, while also guaranteeing that the property remains on the tax rolls.”
The complex was the first major urban project of architect William Warner. It was built in the mid-1970s, in sections divided by the Moshassuck River and linked by a wooden bridge.
Percelay, founder of the $200 million Boston-based Mount Vernon Co., was born in Providence and raised in Pawtucket. He remembers having seen the Moshassuck apartments built, he said when he bought the complex.
Percelay has said Mount Vernon will upgrade the kitchens, baths and common areas of the complex, add a fitness center and computer room, and upgrade the landscaping to make the river a focal point.
With reports by PBN Web Editor Susan A. Baird.