Three years into a building boom, downtown Providence has expanded its active commercial spaces along major streets, attracting dozens of new and expanded businesses.
The new spaces, created on major streets, including Westminster, Fountain and Washington, have turned former office buildings into a mix of uses. Typically, a row of commercial shops is topped with residential apartments, but sometimes they have offices or even a parking garage above.
Much of the new commercial activity is a result of a 2014 change in city zoning, which required newly constructed buildings and substantial renovations along primary streets downtown to place a commercial use, such as office or retail, on the ground floor.
The idea behind the zoning was to make Providence a more pedestrian-friendly city, where people walking on sidewalks wouldn’t be shuffling for a block along a solid wall. On secondary streets, the same zoning ordinance does allow loading zones, parking and other typical functions of a building, said Robert Azar, Providence’s deputy planning director.
Providence does not have a full tally of the amount of new commercial space created since the new zoning took effect. And it has not conducted a survey of building owners to determine what businesses are occupying the new spaces.
But it’s clear that many of the new spaces are occupied by restaurants and banks, Azar said.
“I would say the No. 1 use in these spaces has been restaurants,” he said.
Was that the goal of the city in creating its zoning? Not necessarily. The market is dictating what’s going into the available spaces. The city doesn’t dictate what kind of retail or office use should go into the buildings.
“What we were thinking is that we want pedestrian activity,” Azar said. “It’s desirable to have a mix of all sorts of different commercial services, but it’s very hard to be too specific because you don’t know at any moment what the market is going to be.”
‘What we were thinking is that we want pedestrian activity.’
ROBERT AZAR, Providence deputy planning director
Cornish Associates, which has redeveloped several older buildings in the downtown in the past several years, including through a Massachusetts partner, has found that interest in the downtown has increased substantially in the past decade.
The developer is constructing an addition to the historical Wit Building and renovating that building, as well as the adjoining Lapham and Trayne buildings on Westminster Street.
Between the Westminster Street buildings, as well as a stand-alone building at 31 Aborn St., Cornish will create 30,000 square feet of modern commercial space. Most of the spaces will be available this spring, said Joanna Levitt, the company’s director of commercial leasing and marketing.
But almost half of it, about 40%, has already been leased and negotiations are ongoing with other businesses, she said.
“We’re leasing before they’re built,” she said. Levitt, who joined Cornish 12 years ago, said the interest in downtown spaces is markedly different than it was five to 10 years ago.
“It’s less of us having to seek out tenants, as having people seek us out,” she said, “which is a nice change. We’re filling in gaps. A decade ago, there wasn’t much down here.”
Now, part of her job is making sure the company attracts a mix of business types to its retail and commercial spaces, so that they don’t compete unnecessarily.
“We like to create an environment where everyone can thrive,” Levitt said.
The company has secured leases in the past year or so with more service-oriented companies, such as Urban Fellow Barber Shop, on Washington Street, which moved into the Biltmore Garage building after relocating from Warwick.
Among new restaurants, Bolt Coffee Co. will open its first stand-alone retail location next to the barber shop this year. The Bolt location, which will include dinner service, will be in the former Ellie’s bakery location. The bakery recently relocated to a storefront on Weybosset Street.
On Fountain Street, Saladworks, a franchise that specializes in fresh salads made to order, will move into a street-level space in the renovated Providence Journal Building. The restaurant is scheduled to open in March.
What’s missing? Providence’s downtown still needs a bagel shop, and an Indian restaurant, Levitt noted.
And the biggest missing piece for the retail scene is a grocery market for downtown.
The city now has some 5,000 residents living downtown but no full-service grocery.
A new building under construction by Cornish and its partner Nordblom Co., called the Nightingale, has about 12,000 square feet of retail space on its ground floor. The building will be topped by 143 apartments, and Cornish is trying to secure a market for about 8,000 square feet of that space, which would front on Washington Street, Levitt said.
“We are in the process of trying to identify a suitable, independent market, but we haven’t selected one yet,” she said.
Mary MacDonald is a PBN staff writer. Contact her at Macdonald@PBN.com.
