The moral of the story is “Be careful what you wish for.”
For years city officials have been hoping to upgrade the Dunkin’ Donuts Center and bring more and higher-profile events to Providence.
Rhode Island's Market Has Changed. Developers, Builders, Investors and Sellers Must Change With It.
By Emilio DiSpirito IV License Partner | Engel & Völkers Oceanside Leader | The DiSpirito…
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Last week the wish was fulfilled when the state announced that the Dunk would be one of the first- and second-round sites for the 2010 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
Aside from being the wellspring for more office pools than any three-week event in the country, “March Madness” is a powerful economic generator. The last time it came to Providence, in 1996, the games pumped $10 million into the local economy.
The money comes from people who attend the games – and most arrive by car.
Unfortunately, Providence doesn’t have nearly enough parking, and as the R.I. Convention Center Authority nears its goal of filling 180 dates at the Dunk (as opposed to the current 100), that problem will only grow worse.
The authority wants to add parking adjacent to the arena, but hasn’t come up with any great ideas yet. It is good that it is working to deal with the immediate problem, but the issue is much larger than the Dunk.
The state and the city continue to push Providence as a destination – for tourists, for business people, for families. But they haven’t done enough to ensure all these potential visitors can park their cars and conduct their business. It’s time the state and city stepped up and presented a plan for how they will solve this problem and then execute it.
Serve region’s youth for economic health
Demographics can be a terrible science. It alerts you to oncoming trains decades in advance and then informs you that you can’t get out of the way.
Thankfully, a new report with dire predictions contains within it the seeds of salvation.
“New England 2020,” produced by the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, expects the region to experience a significant decline in the educational levels of its working-age population. The likely result would be the creation of fewer high-wage jobs and a sustained drop in the region’s economic health.
The authors also note that New England attracts college-age adults at a far greater rate than any other age group, repopulating the region with the people needed to forestall the decline.
But we need to take action to make sure that that continues to be the case.
One way to do that is to make affordability a priority for our public colleges and universities, rather than chronically underfunding them, which forces them to keep raising tuitions. We must also pay attention to the University of Rhode Island in particular. Keeping URI competitive as a research and educational institution is crucial to this state.
