Does a single building have the power to alter the nature of a neighborhood?
Opponents of a proposed 75-unit apartment building on Wickenden Street in Providence believe so, and others agree, including an architecture professor at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Many of the residents of the Fox Point neighborhood testifying before the City Plan Commission told the panel that they feared the planned six-story building at Wickenden and Brook streets would not fit a streetscape of mostly two- and three-story buildings.
Those residents argue that the project by developer Dustin Dezube will lead to “corporatization” of the street, a half-mile thoroughfare lined with locally owned storefront businesses. The new structure and its street-level storefront space will push rents higher, they say.
RISD professor Jonathan Knowles sees their point.
Knowles says the project would not align with the area’s character because it would be much larger than the existing, older building along Wickenden and the increased commercial rent prices could displace local businesses.
“To afford the rent for that commercial space in that size of a building is going to be some multinational store, not a mom-and-pop local merchant, and then it starts to change what’s going on around the street,” Knowles said.
Opponents of the project point to developments along Thayer Street near the Brown University campus as what the future could hold for Wickenden.
Lily Bogosian, interim president of the Fox Point Neighborhood Association, says she has noticed several businesses moving onto Wickenden Street, away from Thayer as it became more populated with big businesses.
“This would disrupt the local economy,” Bogosian said. “[Wickenden Street] is one of the last, if not the last, areas of the city that’s booming with locally owned businesses.”
Sharon Steele, president of the Jewelry District Association, spent years fighting a proposed 42-story high-rise in that neighborhood. While the 75-unit building is much smaller, the effects could be equally severe, she says.
The scale and density of the project would affect existing residents’ quality of life by bringing in more traffic, lighting and noise pollution, Steele says.
Those residents in favor of the proposal have noted the city’s need for additional housing.
Commission members voted on Oct. 17 to approve updated plans for the project, but denied a dimensional adjustment that would have allowed the developer to build a fifth floor not visible from Brook and Wickenden streets, as required by the commission.
Dylan Conley, the developer’s attorney, said that denial has caused “significant concerns” about the project’s financial viability.
Several commissioners referred PBN’s questions about residents’ concerns to Deputy Planning Director Robert Azar.
Azar says commissioners make decisions in an attempt to balance the goals of growth and the preservation of an area’s character.
In this case, Azar says, the project’s design with ground-floor commercial spaces below apartments matches the design of nearby buildings. A shift in a neighborhood’s development is caused by overall market trends, not a single project, he says.
Azar says the developer was likely responding to the demand for housing and decided to locate the building in an area within a few blocks of a recently opened Trader Joe’s grocery store and near other housing that’s built in the I-195 Redevelopment District and on South Water Street.
You can couch this in sophisticated and lofty language all you want, but the truth is this article shows NIMBYism at its best. Perhaps you missed the news this week that the State of California is going after San Francisco where objections and ridiculous regulations, even from a lone crackpot, have delayed and killed housing projects which as a consequence has raised housing costs in that city to the highest levels ever. If that sounds familiar that is because similar forces here in Providence are having the same effect on the housing market and the nonsense put forth in this article is a perfect example of that.
Taxpaying voters have the right to maintain the dignity and character of their neighborhoods as they see fit and the City Council and Mayor should adhere to the wishes of those taxpayers.
Tax paying voters should have no right whatsoever over the “dignity and character” of a neighborhood. It’s nothing but a tool used by NIMBYs to keep the “wrong kind of people” out. Cities and towns have zoning laws and building codes to address the needs of residents and developers.