CITYWATCH New café at Alice Building stirs discussion BY IAN DONNIS

Plans for a martini bar in the ground floor of downtown Providence’s Alice Building have expanded into what proprietor Mike Corso describes as a bar and café featuring a wide range of artistic mediums, from fashion to digital media. Corso, the in-house lawyer for Cornish Associates, which developed the Alice Building, says his enterprise, to be known as Tazza, is scheduled to open October 1 and that Symposium Books, an independent bookstore, will also occupy part of the ground floor.

Corso envisions Tazza as part of "creating this neighborhood atmosphere where the residents and employees that work downtown can go before work and then stop by after work," in "a place that has a real appreciation for coffee, beverages, and the arts."

The ground floor use for the Alice Building, which opened to tenants last year, is part of a retail strategy being pursued by Arnold "Buff" Chace’s Cornish Associates. Cornish is moving ahead with plans to develop residential units in the Burgess, O’Gorman, Wilkinson buildings, and although it’s locked in a dispute with Rich Lupo over the tenancy of Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel in the Peerless Building, it also envisions the Peerless as a residential building.

While Corso’s plan for the Alice Building suggests another step toward the more vital residential district long touted by city officials, it hasn’t gone unnoticed by Daniel Kamil and Emily Steffian, a couple that moved to Providence from Los Angeles a few years ago with the intention of launching a film café. After being daunted in their attempts to start the business in two locations, including the Cornish-owned Burgess Building, 232 Westminster St., Kamil and Steffian moved south in March and they plan to unveil their enterprise, The Revival House, next month in a restored historic building in downtown Westerly.

Kamil, after hearing from acquaintances in Providence about Corso’s pending enterprise, at 236 Westminster St., detected a possible resemblance to the film café that he and his wife had hoped to introduce in the nearby Burgess Building. "I’m irked by it, because there was no discussion of that [a café incorporating digital media in the Alice Building] when we were involved with them [Cornish]," says Kamil, 33. "I spent a long part of my life working on this business plan, and I felt there was information in there that was being used." Although Kamil — whose Westerly movie house will highlight directors such as John Huston, Steven Soderbergh, and Mel Brooks — has retained a lawyer, he says he’s taking a wait-and-see attitude.

Asked if Tazza incorporates any elements of Kamil and Steffian’s business plan, Corso says, "I’d say no." Corso cited timing as the main factor as to why the couple’s film café didn’t work in the Burgress Building, and he declined to comment on Kamil’s sense of dissatisfaction. In response to Kamil’s view that the concentrated ownership of downtown property inhibits development, however, Corso (who was cited as a Phoenix Local Hero in 2001 for helping to bring about a state historic tax credit) cited the cost of rehabbing old buildings as a major reason for why such efforts have taken so long.