Providence’s Downcity has made strides in recent years with contemporary lofts occupying what was once a forgotten retail district, where the city’s rich stock of historic buildings had been vacant and deteriorating for decades.
Yet with more people moving into the area and more people visiting its narrow streets, cars line the sidewalks and some bear the city’s infamous orange parking tickets on their windshields.
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So part of the complex equation to sustain Downcity’s revival calls for more parking, yet parking within structures that include housing, the “silver bullet,” supporting the area’s economy, says Arnold “Buff” Chace Jr., president and CEO of Cornish Associates.
“One of the reasons that the district failed initially,” Chace said, “was because it didn’t have enough parking.” Retail shops, in particular, need parking close to their storefronts to stay in business, he added.
Cornish, which has already converted five historic buildings in Downcity into lofts, has a proposal in the works for a mixed-use building with a large parking component, which would occupy the 35,000-square-foot block fronting Westminster, Union, Weybosset and Clemence streets. Chace noted that the latest plans for the project, called Grant’s Block, have yet to go before city officials for the required review and approvals process.
The building would consist of four main elements, according to current plans. Seven-story “liner” buildings would stand on opposite sides of the structure, along Weybosset and Westminster streets. Those buildings would have retail space on the first floors and 24 studio units – which could serve as either offices or housing – in each of the structures’ upper floors.
“We’ll market (the upper floors) and see what the response is, it could easily be totally live or totally work (space),” Chace said, noting that the R.I. Economic Development Corporation recently informed him that there is new demand for office space in Downcity.
Between the two liner buildings would be an eight-level parking garage with about 500 spaces, half of which reserved for public use with the balance for area residents, Chace said.
Above the garage, but not the liner buildings, would be a 14-story tower with about 100 housing units and penthouses on the top two floors. As proposed, the project would cost about $90 million. Condo prices would begin at about $350,000, Chace said.
Yet the current zoning for the site limits structures to 100 feet in height. Chace’s proposed building would soar some 250 feet at its highest point, and the two liner buildings would be about 100 feet tall, said Chace, who added that the liner buildings would block the view of the tower from pedestrians’ vantage along Westminster and Weybosset streets.
Though the building would not meet height standards under current zoning, the city’s overhaul of its zoning ordinance may include a provision that would give the project wings.
Thomas E. Deller, the city’s director of planning and development, said an updated ordinance could lift limits on building height for developments that provide incentives to the city in the form of, say, parking, affordable housing, or open space. He noted that the proposed ordinance must undergo a public hearings process, and he hopes to present it to the City Council for final approval sometime in late October.
Chace said city officials have said Downcity needs at least 2,000 parking spaces to support the needs of residents and shoppers visiting the district, which consists of more than 30 blocks bound by Dorrance, Pine, Empire, and Fountain streets.
“This is very ambitious,” Chace said of his proposed project. “It’s costly, so we’re trying to work with the city to respond to our ideas as to how we could take best advantage of this site.”
Chace and a group of private investors assembled Grant’s Block through acquiring properties from three different owners over five years. The purchases, along with the costs of asbestos removal and demolition, would total $6 million. State historians have deemed the existing buildings on the block historically insignificant, and consented to the anticipated demolition, Chace said.
Since Chace began purchasing Downcity buildings in the early 1990s, his firm has overseen the renovation of five historic structures into more than 180 loft-style apartments, as well as retail, restaurant and other uses on the street level.
