In Providence’s West Side Arts District, a nonprofit neighborhood group is trying its hand at new construction with a small-scale, mixed-use project that has a design chosen by neighbors.
“We wanted to promote a positive use, and we also wanted to promote local businesses,” said Kari Lang, executive director of the West Broadway Neighborhood Association, which will develop the 0.2-acre parcel. The $1.3 million development, called Shop Work Eat Live Local (SWELL) at 1577 Westminster St., will be an example of “good-quality, green design” in the neighborhood, Lang said.
At a 2004 meeting, WBNA members and neighbors were asked to pick between building designs submitted by local architects. They chose a three-story design created by Providence-based William Kite Architects Inc.
Kite’s Associate Architect Christine Malecki West created the design.
“It’s an historic neighborhood and Westminster Street is a main feature of the neighborhood. So we took a lot of inspiration from the big Victorian mansions that line the street,” she said. “We took inspiration for that in terms of the massing, but we’ve added our own spin to the details.”
That includes a long-lasting metal roof that mimics the Mansard roofs of many of the other buildings in the neighborhood.
“We’re working with a lot of nonprofits these days,” West said. In recent years West has seen more nonprofits become interested in small-scale green building.
The anchor tenant of the building will be Urban Green Foods Cooperative, which will rent a 1,750-square-foot storefront on the ground floor.
Above the store will be the four condominiums, each 988-square-foot, two-bedroom units. Each condo has “a really airy living-dining-room area with really large windows, a kitchen with an island – a slate-top island that actually comes from the Cranston Street Armory,” Lang said.
With energy-efficient appliances, dual-flush toilets, low-VOC paint and bamboo floors, the condos aim at being green.
The architect’s “projection was that to heat one unit for a year, the heating bill would be $300,” Lang said, “which I can’t even believe.”
This development will be the first new construction for WBNA, but the nonprofit has completed three other restoration projects.
WBNA headquarters is in a former Texaco gas station building, renovated during 1994, on Westminster Street. WBNA also renovated 1390 Westminster St. to accommodate four apartments and two storefronts, which are now occupied by Community Music Works. And during 2003 the group renovated 1192 Westminster St. – a project known as the Design House, which is now affordable housing. •
