The grumbling is getting louder.
Why is the commission charged with overseeing the I-195 Redevelopment District’s buildout allowing so much housing?
Why is the Wexford Science & Technology center the only building that is expected to create jobs?
The heart of these questions concerns what the 40 acres left by the relocation of Interstate 195 should be.
The district is expected by many to be a smaller version of Cambridge, Mass., a place that seems to be making groundbreaking discoveries, as well as minting multimillionaires every week. If only Gov. Gina M. Raimondo could snap her fingers and make it happen right now.
But it isn’t that simple.
For one thing, Cambridge is a thriving urban landscape teaming with residential, commercial, educational and yes, corporate space. Providence has three of those traits, so why the delay?
Well, those who were in on the ground floor of the district’s development say they never expected it to revolve entirely around job creation. This new piece of Providence was intended to be a new neighborhood, with its commercial emphasis to be “Meds and Eds,” as former Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee often said, but also to be a thriving urban landscape.
Doing that kind of private development is rarely a straight-line process, and until it hits a critical mass, it can be a slow one at that.
Telling someone to “chill out” rarely elicits that response. But as the city looks to continue on its journey forward, it might make sense to look at the I-195 land and keep in mind that neither Cambridge, nor Rome, was built in a day.