Future ‘Dynamo House’ will showcase R.I.’s past
As a history professor at the University of Rhode Island and Providence College, Albert T. Klyberg said, he came across it all the time – students in their early 20s who had already made up their minds to leave the state for good.
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It was disheartening to Klyberg, who said part of the problem is that Rhode Island doesn’t celebrate itself. But it hasn’t been for lack of effort – over the years, plans had started, stalled and been put on hiatus for the Heritage Harbor Museum, a project intended to honor the state’s rich history.
Now, with the announcement of new plans for the project and a partnership between developer Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse and the Heritage Harbor Corporation, Klyberg sees the opportunity for Rhode Island to stop apologizing for itself.
At the official announcement of the project, dubbed “Dynamo House,” Struever Bros. last week unveiled new plans for the South Street Station, a building formerly used as a Narragansett Electric Co. power plant along the Providence River. Included in the proposal for the mixed-use project are office space, retail and a hotel.
Also included in the $140 million project is the museum, a site dedicated to the state’s history that was originally slated to encompass the entire power-plant site abutting Providence’s Jewelry District.
The museum project has been scaled down from its original plans – which called for the inclusion of library and large public spaces. The Heritage Harbor will now occupy 55,000 square feet, just over one-seventh of the 350,000-square-foot building.
The museum portion of the project will cost Struever Bros. $15 million. Along with a $5 million bond, approved by voters in 2002, the museum will open with money raised by the Heritage Harbor Corporation.
Klyberg, who sits on the nonprofit’s board of trustees, said that figure could be around $15 million, but the final cost will be determined by White Oak Associates – a planning firm that will help the corporation develop plans for the Smithsonian-affiliated facility.
Klyberg said the museum will house various exhibits celebrating Narragansett Bay, the state’s contribution to the United States and its Colonial roots, the engineering and enterprise that helped the state grow, and the importance of transportation in the state’s history.
All of this, he hopes, will present the argument against what his students have thought.
“It’s going to show the other side of the story, which is why to stay and invest in Rhode Island,” Klyberg said.
John W. Jacobsen, president of Marblehead, Mass.-based White Oak Associates, said the museum planning firm will help the museum corporation develop plans for the site to best fit the community and the space allotted in the building.
“I think that this … will really help the city to develop its creative economy,” Jacobsen said.
The project, slated to break ground in October and be completed by the end of 2008, will comprise three buildings, separately referred to as Turbine Hall, The 200-Pound House and The 400-Pound House. Struever Bros. will include Class-A office space, a restaurant, retail shops and a rooftop hotel with about 120 rooms.
A spokeswoman for Struever Bros. said the developer has no prospective tenants lined up for the offices, and no brand names have been identified for the restaurant, hotel and retail portions of the project.
For Struever Bros. – developer of the $80 million Royal Mills in West Warwick, as well as the $55 million Rising Sun Mills and the proposed $333 million American Locomotive Works project in Olneyville – Dynamo House is the first large-scale project in Rhode Island that won’t include condominiums.
Bill Struever, president and CEO of the Baltimore-based firm, said the former power plant did not lend itself to residential uses.
But the Dynamo House project was still of great interest to him, Struever said, largely because of the role it could play in Providence’s revitalized waterfront.
Called the “next frontier for the most exciting economic development” in the city last week by Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline, the area will soon undergo vast renovations as the project to relocate Interstate 195 is completed.
About 35 acres will become available for development after the old highway is removed.
The city already has announced plans for a public park and an extension of the Riverwalk in the area.
The current development along the city’s waterfront is a far cry from Struever’s earliest experiences in Rhode Island, when he was a Brown University student. At the time, long before the relocation of the Providence River and the creation of Waterplace Park, he said the river’s biggest claim was having “the world’s widest bridge.”
“Now, you have WaterFire and this great public dynamic of the waterfront,” Struever said, adding that the location is an important link between the city’s neighborhoods.
The structure itself also provides the company with many opportunities, he said.
The building – built between 1912 and 1925, by Narragansett Electric – supplied electricity to Providence and neighboring cities. It was decommissioned in the 1990s and sat vacant until the end of decade, when the company donated the $10 million site to the museum corporation.
What was left behind by the electric company was an “awe-inspiring” brick building with 80-foot ceilings, arched cathedral-style windows and limestone and granite trim.
The firm also will make use of the building’s smokestacks, possibly using them for fireworks displays, Struever said.
“They will be lit up and they will be an icon as you drive up [Route] 95,” he said.
