If a picture is worth a thousand words, the one accompanying our story (See Current PBN Issue) on the other side of the downtown renaissance tells a story all by itself.
Of course, we encourage you to read the story along with viewing the photograph. In it you will be reminded of the city’s glory days — days when the likes of Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Brenda Lee and Buddy Holly visited the Strand Theatre.
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And when Loew’s State Theatre (now the Providence Performing Arts Center) was the place to see a movie. The city buzzed with retail activity — with Shepard’s and Peerless, Gladdings, Cherry & Webb, and the Outlet Company.
The bulk of the city’s retail activity is now located within and immediately around Providence Place — the construction of which we wholeheartedly supported. Providence Place holds little responsibility in the fate of the old downtown existing about a mile away. The truth is the city’s old core was dying long before ground was broken for Providence Place.
It was silly for anyone to have thought that a successful Providence Place would jump-start the rest of the city. Malls, after all, are designed to pull people in — and keep them there. Providence Place is the perfect example of such an approach, with not only its wide range of stores but its movie theaters and bevy of restaurants. The success of Providence Place and the likelihood that it will continue to spur economic development projects, such as more hotels and retail centers in its shadows is a terrific story.
But the city’s old core is a much sadder tale.
There are too many vacant storefronts, too many merchants suggesting that crime is indeed a problem, too many absentee landlords.
We have been encouraged by small signs of progress, such as reports that several buildings in the area will be renovated and converted into residential apartments, and an infusion by the Rhode Island Foundation of some $10 million. But that’s hardly enough. The cost to renovate the Capital Center area is well over a billion dollars. And the Rhode Island Foundation correctly pointed out – its investment must be leveraged with other investments in the area.
We would like to hear from city officials with exciting and bold new efforts to clean up the area – policies that can begin immediately. So much is promised in plans and dreams, yet so little has changed that expectations of a better downtown are vanishing.
If Providence Place taught us anything, it taught us to dream big — because anything is possible. Given what has been accomplished in the city in recent years, restoring the old core would seem to be a very realistic goal.
Perhaps the saddest thing about that photo on the downtown story is this. It was one of several from which we could have chosen.
