Forecasts of a fully fledged economic recovery kicked 2011 off with promise and the hope that Rhode Island’s ailing real estate markets would soon be pulled from the post-housing-bubble doldrums.
Instead, commercial and residential real estate muddled along this year behind a weak economy that couldn’t quite get off the ground. New development in the Ocean State and southeastern Massachusetts remained sparse.
But there was good news in 2011 and reasons to start 2012 with the same optimism of a January ago.
After years of anticipation, the old elevated Interstate 195 overpass that had cut a rusty path through downtown Providence for decades was extracted from the city surface.
In the highway’s wake, acres of land were opened up to potential development, and the old Jewelry District became the Knowledge District that city leaders are counting on to draw high-tech and life sciences companies into a powerful new economy.
Exactly what will be built in the vacated highway land and who will build it remains unanswered, although November saw a hand-picked commission begin the process of studying what should go there.
Where the old expressway crossed the Providence River, city officials have planned a new pedestrian bridge to draw people to the river and connect the area to other neighborhoods.
While tearing up the old highway had been in the works for years, the October sale of the Promet Marine Services shipyard to an international scrap metal recycler came as a surprise to many.
Located in the heart of Providence’s Allens Avenue working waterfront, Promet had been at the center of a long debate in the city about whether Allens Avenue should be opened up to new kinds of development – such as shops, condominiums or even offices – or remain protected as a bastion of high-paying blue-collar industrial jobs.
The sale of Promet to Sims Metal Management confirmed that, at least for now, the working waterfront has won the debate and that section of the city’s Narragansett Bay shore will remain industrial.
While the Promet deal and the Knowledge District activity pointed toward a potentially brighter future for commercial and industrial real estate, the collapse of Struever Bros. Eccles and Rouse pointed to just how deep the fallout from the Great Recession has proven to be.
Struever swept into Rhode Island from Baltimore in 2006 and took on a series of daring adaptive reuse and mill conversion projects, including American Locomotive Works on Valley Street in Providence and the Dynamo House on the Providence River.
After finishing the Royal Mills residential conversion in West Warwick and the Rising Sun Mills apartments in the Olneyville section of Providence, however, Struever’s larger ventures began to languish when the economy soured.
By 2011, Struever was being chased by numerous creditors for unpaid bills and the state for a large unpaid tax bill. The company was operating without a phone number or website.
About 200,000 square feet of partially filled office space was completed at American Locomotive Works, but plans for a Sheraton Hotel, affordable housing complex and pedestrian bridge across the Woonasquatucket River never got off the ground.
Dynamo House remains an empty brick shell of the old South Street power plant and plans to build a museum, office space and hotel remain stalled. •
