On a stretch of the Providence waterfront where industrial mills once powered the city’s economy, hundreds of people attended a party last Saturday to celebrate a project that will transform a 19th-century coal gasification plant into artist studios, a gallery, a restaurant and a conference space.
As part of the Conley’s Wharf at State Pier No. 1 project along Allens Avenue, an estimated 48 artists will be given a stake in an ambitious economic development plan on the city’s waterfront. The project also puts a feisty new nonprofit organization engaged in real estate development for the arts on the map.
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The Partnership for Creative Industrial Space, which holds the master lease on approximately 31,000 square feet in the building, is a 9-month-old nonprofit dedicated to ensuring that artists and creative small businesses have a future in Providence’s mills and industrial spaces as the buildings are redeveloped.
PCIS directors Lisa Carnevale and Erik Bright, entrepreneurs with deep ties to the local artist community, co-founded the organization last August because they were concerned by the number of artists and others who make their living in the creative sector who have lost their work spaces in recent years when the old mill buildings they occupied were redeveloped as condominiums.
“There’s been a lot of displacement of artists due to condo conversions in the mills,” Carnevale said. “A lot of people have moved here because of the presence of the arts, and we wouldn’t want to lose that.”
Preserving millions of square feet of mill work space at prices affordable for artists that represent pay dirt for developers amid a red-hot residential real estate market is a formidable task for an organization with two employees, operating on a shoestring budget.
PCIS shares an office with another business at 27 Sims Ave. in the Steel Yard, a collective commercial space for artists and creative workers in the Olneyville section of Providence.
Carnevale formerly worked with Rhode Island Citizens for the Arts. Bright is a partner in Monohasset Mills, an artist conversion project of a mill in Olneyville.
At the request of Providence’s Department of Planning and Development, in August PCIS conducted a tenant survey on a cross-section of the 250 buildings included in the city’s Industrial Commercial Buildings District. Based on the data compiled during the survey, PCIS reported an estimated 1,261 businesses and 15,672 jobs in the mills.
Many of those jobs and businesses could be lost as the buildings that house them are bought be developers and converted into condominiums, Carnevale said. Half a dozen condo conversion projects are currently in the works in the district, most recently including plans announced by a Los Angeles developer to build condominiums in the old Eastern Butcher Block building at 25 Eagle St.
The project will displace 14 businesses that employ 142 workers, including dozens of artists, artisans and woodworkers who have worked in the building for more than 15 or 20 years, Carnevale said.
Creation of the city’s Mill District several years ago spurred a rapid development of the properties into residential condos, because it made the 250 mills in the district eligible for property tax abatement and state historic tax credits, Carnevale said.
While redevelopment of the mills is a sign of economic development in Providence, it is in the best interests of the city to ensure that the artists and creative workers who have used the buildings for decades still have a place to live and work, said Cliff Wood, director of the Providence Department of Art, Culture and Tourism.
“The arts in Providence are a pillar of our economic development strategy,” Wood said. “It’s part of our identity. When we talk about attracting businesses here, attracting visitors here, the arts are a major draw. And you have to support the artists who create that culture.”
The deal that PCIS negotiated to lease space at Conley’s Wharf will put such artists at the center of an ambitious Tri-City development plan for that part of the waterfront that dates to the Cianci administration. On the vacant 9-acre parcel north of the Conley’s Wharf building, the developers – Patrick Conley and his wife, Gail – have said they would like to build a hotel with condos and a parking garage. At an existing 1,100-foot-long wharf on State Pier No. 1, Conley envisions a 400-slip marina and docking facilities for large cruise ships and a ferry service to Newport.
PCIS is subleasing space dedicated to artists and small creative businesses on three floors of the building, which will be rented to artists and creative small businesses at $5 to $8 per square foot. The first spaces are expected to be available in early August, and PCIS is currently accepting applications. Priority will be given to individuals and businesses that have been displaced in the Mill District.
“This is the first project we’ve had to assess the need, and it’s quite huge,” Carnevale said.
“We’ve gotten an amazing response.”
