After six months of what has been at times heated debate over the development of Eagle Square in Providence, Mayor Vincent A. Cianci, Jr. is ready to unveil plans for the seven semi-abandoned 19th and early 20th century mill buildings located there.
Cianci and his staff are proposing a project for the development of the area at Atwells Avenue and Eagle Street, and “within a week of two” will be making an announcement about what the project includes.
The mayor has been meeting with the developers, Barry Feldman and Gene Beaudoin of New York’s Feldco Development for the past month.
“We want to do as much as we can to preserve those buildings,” he said, “and we’ll let him proceed with certain caveats, but we’re not at liberty to give those out because we haven’t yet really determined what they are.”
Cianci did say the buildings would be “absolutely different” from the drawings that Feldco presented at the November meeting where Feldco submitted preliminary plans before the City Plan Commission. The company’s proposal for Providence Commons, which would include a Shaw’s Supermarket and 26 neighboring stores had critics calling it a strip mall, and saying it was inappropriately suburban looking for that area of the city.
More than 400 area residents objected to the proposal, and the next month the Plan Commission voted not to approve Feldco’s plan.
In January Feldco removed itself from the agenda of a third Plan Commission meeting and in turn withdrew its application. The company went straight to the city’s Department of Building Inspection and Standards and Chief Zoning Officer Ramzi Loqa, who said Feldco’s plan did not have to be submitted to the plan commission review process.
To quiet Providence Commons objectors Feldco took the case to Providence Superior Court in February, where Judge Michael A. Silverstein ruled that the company did in fact need to go through the process Loqa said was unnecessary. The company filed an expedited appeal which will be heard in Supreme Court next month.
“All I can say is that it’s better than the original plans and it will make the buildings more conducive to that area,” said Cianci.
At a presentation at the Rhode Island Statewide Historic Preservation Conference last week, a panel of five discussed what has been going on and tried to predict what would happen next with Eagle Square. The panel included Professor Derek Bradford, the Rhode Island School of Design professor of architecture whose class on Eagle Square came up with an alternative to Feldco’s plan in February, and Providence Preservation Society Executive Director Catherine Horsey. Also featured were the city’s Associate Director of Planning Samuel Shamoon, spokesperson for the Eagle Square artists Raphael Lyon, and Chris Velasco, who is the director of national advisory services for the Minneapolis-based ArtSpace Projects.
ArtSpace Projects is a non-profit group advocating the space needs of working artists who were being forced out of Minneapolis’ historic warehouse district in the late 1970s, ArtSpace has evolved into a developer of historic warehouses and commercial buildings for artist live/work studios. The group owns and manages over $55 million worth of property containing more than 500 units of live/work space. Velasco was in town to see what sort of service he could be to the Eagle Square situation.
“This may be the strongest arts community per capita in the country,” he said at the forum. “Maybe we can look at a solution that brings regional artists together.”
Lyon spoke of the alliance he has developed with the Latino community in the area, who had not been aware of the project because of the language barriers, and they were able to give him 500 more signatures on his petition against the development.
Lyon said he finds once the language barrier is broken down, the Latino community feels the same way about Providence Commons.
“I haven’t run into one person — from any background, who likes Feldman’s plan when it is described accurately. I don’t run into anyone who, when you explain, at minimum the size of the project, the impact on traffic, or the threat to Olneyville Square and independent local business — who isn’t furious that this project was ever even considered,” he said. “It’s not hard to win over the community. It is just a question of informing them.”
Abelardo Hernandez, a community organizer from St. Teresa’s Church in Olneyville has formed a neighborhood group since talking with Lyon.
“Since we were really segregated we never knew about the project,” said Hernandez. “We found out only through other groups informing us.”
Hernandez said the group was only informed about the supermarket, and heard nothing about the neighboring stores until a few months ago. Since then he has organized community meetings and is trying to establish more of a presence for the 1,000 or so people in his neighborhood so they are not overlooked again.
“Nobody really looks at us as part of the big city of Providence,” he said, “but I’m glad that the groups are beginning to bond, and the many groups in the neighborhood are concerned and aware that we should do something.”
Lyon said the alliance is a good match, and the small business owners in the Latino community share a similar plight with the artists.
“It’s really such a fine line between artists and small businesses,” he said.