ALCO plan proceeds to Phase II

ERIC BUSCH, the American Locomotive Works site manager for Streuver Bros. Eccles & Rouse, looks over the property. The former industrial site, at the corner of Eagle and Valley streets in Providence, will be turned into shops, offices and apartments.  /
ERIC BUSCH, the American Locomotive Works site manager for Streuver Bros. Eccles & Rouse, looks over the property. The former industrial site, at the corner of Eagle and Valley streets in Providence, will be turned into shops, offices and apartments. /

Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse is ready to launch the second phase of its American Locomotive Works complex, the massive $333 million redevelopment project in Providence’s Valley neighborhood that the Baltimore-based developer unveiled last year.
The second phase entails converting two former U.S. Rubber Co. manufacturing plants into a rental apartment building – including some affordable housing – and an office building.
Work is scheduled to begin in coming weeks at the adjacent buildings near the intersection of Eagle and Valley streets. The building rehabilitations will be financed in part with state historic tax credits, said Eric Busch, Struever Bros.’ director of development at ALCO.
“We’re very pleased with the progress of the project,” Busch said. “We’ve had a tremendous amount of positive feedback from the community and from stakeholders and from the marketplace, and we’re excited about getting started on phase two.”
Struever Bros. also recently signed leases for new commercial tenants that will occupy space in the building already being redeveloped at ALCO, Busch said. But he declined to name the new tenants, saying the company was not ready to make that announcement.
The apartment building to be developed is a five-story, 117,000-square-foot structure; it will be turned into about 124 apartments – a mix of studios, one- and two-bedroom units. Twenty percent of the units will be restricted to residents with incomes between 80 percent and 120 percent of the area’s median income, Busch said.
At a series of community meetings that Struever Bros. held at the onset of its ALCO project, advocates urged the developer to create housing affordable to local residents who earn too much to qualify for public housing assistance but are at risk of being priced out of the gentrifying neighborhood.
Yet the developer’s commitment to building “work force”-class apartments affordable to average neighborhood residents, but nicer and more expensive than traditional low-income housing, means Struever Bros. can’t get federal subsidies available for the latter type of projects, Busch said.
What other financing options exist is unclear. Struever Bros. is in discussions with several public agencies and neighborhood groups to work out a funding mechanism, Busch said, adding that the developer is committed to having units that teachers, firefighters, police officers and other residents of the neighborhood can afford.
The apartment building also will have a “green” roof – which will be paid for with a grant from R.I. Department of Environmental Management – and Struever Bros. is considering developing the entire building to LEED certification standards, Busch said.
Construction is scheduled to be completed late next summer, Busch said.
At the same time, Struever Bros. will convert an adjacent one-and-a-half-story former factory building into commercial office space with roughly 50,000 square feet, Busch said. The developer would like the building to be occupied by a single tenant, he said.
Construction is scheduled to be completed within a year, but would finish sooner if Struever Bros. secures a tenant ready to move in, Busch said.
“If a tenant stepped forward today we could be moving forward very quickly to have the building ready,” he said.
The work on the two buildings represents the next major phase of construction at the ALCO site, several acres of former industrial land along the Woonasquatucket River where U.S. Rubber, American Locomotive Works and Nicholson File once did business.
Struever Bros. acquired the parcels in 2006, announcing a plan to spend $333 million on a development project that would transform 26 former mills and factories into a vibrant mixed-use neighborhood.
Last year, the R.I. Economic Development Corporation became Struever Bros.’ first tenant at ALCO, when it moved its staff of 46 into 20,000 square feet of space on the ground floor of the first building that Struever Bros. rehabbed on the site.
The ALCO project is the largest single investment in the city since the Providence Place mall was built and opened in 1999, and is the most ambitious of several mill rehab development projects that Struever Bros. has embarked on in the Valley and Olneyville neighborhoods.
As development continues at ALCO, neighborhood advocates have said they want Struever Bros. to bring in retail shops, doctors’ offices and other commercial tenants that they say would contribute to the life of the surrounding community.
“I hope that Struever Bros. really puts in businesses and services there that are really going to benefit the neighborhood, and the quality of life in the neighborhood,” said Erik Bright, co-director of the Partnership for Creative Industrial Space, an advocacy group that worked with Struever Bros. to relocate and provide financial assistance to artists and small businesses displaced by its ALCO development project. •

No posts to display