While city officials debate whether to approve the proposed 600-foot Hope Point Tower in Providence’s Jewelry District, businesspeople in and around the neighborhood are divided by it.
“I have mixed feelings,” said Michele Aucoin, owner of ArtProv Gallery, an art gallery on Chestnut Street. The gallery is a short walk from the vacant lot on Dyer Street with a river view where the Fane Organization, of New York, wants to build the luxury, residential high-rise.
“While it would be good to have more residents in the neighborhood,” Aucoin added, “I think with the height, it would be too tall. It would be overpowering – it wouldn’t fit in.”
She is part of the Jewelry District Association, a group of merchants and residents in the neighborhood that has taken a stand against the Fane project. But not everybody in the association agrees with the official stance.
Jewelry District Association President Sharon Steele said a survey done of residents and merchants in the Jewelry District and elsewhere downtown, as well as the Fox Point and College Hill neighborhoods across the river on the East Side, found that 70 percent were against it.
“They’re entitled to their opinion,” she said about the 30 percent minority, “But we operate on a majority.”
The main point, she said, is that Fane’s tower would significantly exceed the 100-foot building-height limit set by the zoning for the site.
Steele said she once met Jason Fane and his sister Daria, who serve as president and vice president, respectively, of the Fane Organization, and they seemed set against building the tower at another site in Providence.
Referring to the height restriction, she said, “This is about [what is] legal, legal, legal at the end of the day.”
Dante Bellini Jr., a spokesman for Fane, declined to discuss the project.
‘If I were competing with [Fane], I wouldn’t want it either.’
JOSEPH PAOLINO JR., Paolino Properties managing partner
“We’re just focusing toward working on our presentation [at City Hall],” Bellini said.
“Once a hearing is scheduled by the City Council’s Committee on Ordinances, the panel will take public comment, and then vote on a recommendation to send to the full council,” said City Council spokesman Billy Kepner. “Once it goes to the council, it will need to be brought before the body two times for passage or nonpassage.”
Perhaps the biggest stakeholder in the Jewelry District to line up against the proposal is Dick Galvin, the Boston-based developer who led the South Street Landing project, which developed an academic building, student housing and a parking garage – all limited to several stories in height.
In a letter to City Hall, Galvin wrote the City Council should not “change the rules in the middle of the game” by allowing Fane’s tower, which needs a zoning change.
Arnold “Buff” Chace, founder and managing partner of Cornish Associates, a real estate development company in downtown Providence, agreed with Galvin’s perspective.
“At that height, it should be in the center of the city. Development [at the Jewelry District site] should be on a scale that enhances the [nearby] park and not diminishes it,” said Chace, also chairman of the Downtown Providence Parks Conservancy.
Chace said he doesn’t think there is enough demand for such a big luxury tower in Providence and building it could have negative ripple effects on the market, hurting chances to gain future investment downtown.
Joseph Paolino Jr., former Providence mayor and now managing partner of Paolino Properties, a real estate management and investment firm with several major downtown commercial properties in its portfolio, said it isn’t for anyone else to say whether Fane’s tower would be financially feasible or not.
“If Fane’s bankers have committed to the dollars, who are we to say that he can’t get it done?” Paolino said.
Those in real estate development who criticize Fane’s plan, he said, are likely doing so because they don’t want competition and are worried about saturating the market.
“If I were competing with [Fane], I wouldn’t want it either,” Paolino said.
“You don’t say to someone from out of town: Take your $300 million and go home,” he continued. “The economic wave we’re in isn’t going to last much longer. You need to take advantage of any development, in any way,” he added. “I say bring it on. If some people don’t like it, move to the suburbs.”
The Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce officially has a neutral stance on the proposed tower.
“It’s not the kind of issue that would fall into our portfolio,” said Laurie White, the Chamber’s president.
As expected, those in the construction industry strongly support the proposal because of the jobs it would create.
“It’s some kind of [Not in My Backyard],” Michael Sabitoni, president of the Rhode Island Building and Construction Trades, said of opponents of the tower. “At the end of the day, this is a cash-strapped city and, when you look at the pros and cons, the pros outweigh the cons.”
Gregory Mancini, executive director and general counsel for Build RI, a coalition of building contractor associations, thinks competing business interests are behind some of the opposition.
The stated reasons against the project, Mancini said, are just “a pretext for people who don’t want it for their own selfish reasons.”
Scott Blake is a PBN staff writer. Email him at Blake@PBN.com.