When J. Christian Bollwage, Mayor of Elizabeth, New Jersey, visited Rhode Island earlier this year to attend a Brownfields conference, he delivered an important message — one that cut to the very heart of urban renewal.
“We need to start to reuse our land and recycle it because it’s the only way we are going to be able to increase investment in our urban areas,” he said. “Frankly, we just can’t keep tearing up the farm space and green space”
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Bollwage learned through experience. He sold developers and community members on the idea of jobs — and soon blighted areas became office parks. Environmentally damaged areas did not have to be declared dead, he said.
Providence took a chapter from Bollwage’s book last week. Official word came that the long-abandoned and environmentally damaged former Gorham Manufacturing site — comprising 37 acres bordering the West End, Elmwood, South Providence, and Washington Park neighborhoods — will soon be home to a Super Stop & Shop, the Providence YMCA and other retail tenants.
The Providence Redevelopment Agency has given the green light to developers, Churchill & Banks to move forward with its shopping center proposal.
The former Gorham site had become a poster child of sorts for so many of the areas of Providence — away from downtown — that so desperately need help. The site, which once contained more than 40 buildings, was abandoned nearly 20 years ago. In 1993, Textron, one of the site’s former owners, agreed to remove asbestos from all buildings there and addressed groundwater and soil contamination problems.
It has been a long time coming, but it finally appears that the old Gorham site is about to get new life.
Providence Mayor Vincent A. Cianci, Jr. is not having a very good 2001, but he deserves credit for the redevelopment of the Gorham site. It was Cianci, after all, who reclaimed the site by foreclosing on a right of redemption through the courts – thus making the city the property’s sole owner.
That bold move, it appears, is about to pay dividends in a section of the city that has thus far escaped any renaissance.
