Downtown on a roll (continued)

IT BEGAN with an idea.

In the early ’90s, Buff Chace decided to redevelop a strip mall owned by his family in Mashpee, Massachusetts, as a traditional New England town center, rather than aiding and abetting the spread of sprawl on Cape Cod. The process led him into conversation and then friendship with Andres Duany, the Miami-based urban land planner, and the realization that downtown Providence offered an underutilized, yet intact, traditional New England town center seemingly ripe for reuse.

In 1992, Duany came to town for the kind of planning session known as a charette, and an initial downtown revival plan focused on specialty retail. "If you remember in those days, you had to go to Warwick to buy your underwear," Chace recalls. The vision fell apart, though, as plans proceeded for what would become the Providence Place Mall.

A second charette, in 1994, emphasized housing, especially for artists. The 12 percent response rate from mailing lists of RISD alumni and the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts suggested a willingness of people to live downtown, and the effort attracted institutional support. Costs relative to the income were higher than the project could bear, though, leading Cornish to push for the historic tax credit. In a culture where development is based on a certainty of short-term profit, banks were reluctant to take part. It didn’t help, of course, that Chace was pursuing something more akin to a European style of development.

Although the idea of breathing fresh life into the city held appeal, he says, "Whether it was the right thing from a business perspective . . . is a queFstion mark." Asked about the profitability of the residential developments, Chace says, "They won’t be profitable by themselves unless they create positive momentum that makes the whole district a more attractive place." Although success remains uncertain, not least because proponents believe a West Warwick casino would sap an important amount of attraction from downtown Providence, Chace remains optimistic.

Some progress came with the opening of the 36-unit Smith Building, Chace’s first residential project, in 1999. Yet for all of former mayor Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci Jr.’s talk about the downtown arts district, the only artists living downtown were generally those at AS220. A lingering dispute between Chace and Rich Lupo over Lupo’s tenancy in the Peerless Building, seen by proponents as the linchpin of downtown development, not to mention the high cost of rehabilitating old buildings, did little to further the cause. Nor would the downtown property owners go to an intermediate step — rough spaces with artist-friendly rents, for example — that would have speeded the residential transformation of downtown.

Things started to change when Rhode Island several years ago adopted a historic tax credit, based on a model in Missouri, which allows developers to recoup up to 30 percent of the cost of redeveloping a historic property. In another major development, Lupo and Chace resolved their differences late last year, paving the way for Lupo’s relocation to the Strand and the redevelopment of the Peerless. The opening of the Alice Building followed, with 38 units in December 2003, and the development of the Burgess, O’Gorman, and Wilkinson buildings, which Chace had bought from the Paolinos. Cornish also dedicated a floor-level space on Union Street to a cooperative gallery, The Space at Alice.

The current sense of momentum pleases downtown residents like Maria Ruggieri, a jewelry designer who moved into the Smith Building about five years ago from Pawtuxet Village. "It’s going to be like night and day," says Ruggieri, who serves as president of the recently formed Downtown Neighborhood Alliance. "The Peerless is really the cornerstone of all the residential living downtown." As far as the neighborhood’s evolution, "It just needs a little more time, I really believe that."

THEQUESTIONNOW becomes, how will the fledgling residential growth of downtown affect the area?

For Francis X. Scire, who’s pursuing the retail marketing plan for Chace’s Cornish Associates, the hope is that the growing number of residents will complement his efforts to bring a flavorful mix of consumer attractions. His goals include a shoe store, a fresh green grocer, a fresh wrap and go kind of place, "edgy, funky retail," perhaps shops with flowers, new and used music, videos, vintage clothing, and home furnishings — "a flavorful neighborhood [that] isn’t just an upscale Newbury Street." Scire, who touts the far lower rental cost for retail space in Providence than Boston or New York, with an audience of 40,000 office workers, cites his objective as "eclectic with variety that caters to a variety of types and people."

Symposium Books, located on Westminster Street, near the Peerless, delivers on this promise. With an intellectual bent and appealing prices (The Zinn Reader for $10.98 and Mike Davis’s Ecology of Fear for $8.98, for example), the store seems a welcome addition. "We thought that the city needed a store like this," says co-owner Anne Marie Keohane, who came to town with her husband from New York to launch the enterprise. The response has been positive, she says, although the small number of people browsing on a recent mid-day suggests the need for more customers. Says Keohane, "We’re just anxious to see [the increase in the number of downtown residents] happen sooner, rather than later. This is a risk."

As far as the pending influx of new residents and students, "Two years from this, we’re going to look back at this and we’re not going to recognize downtown," says Bert Crenca, AS220’s artistic director. Although a lot of AS220’s constituents question the upscale lean of the residential development, "These buildings have been unoccupied for an awful long time," Crenca notes. The pending arrival of more downtown residents is a positive thing, he says, and the need for historic tax credits and risk-taking on the part of bankers and developers indicates the difficult of carrying off the long-discussed residential vision. (AS220 is in discussion with Johnson & Wales University to remake the former Dreyfuss Hotel Building on Washington Street, Crenca says, with studio and affordable residential space for artists.)

Crenca sees Providence benefiting in the big picture from downtown’s evolution. In his mind’s eye, he sees out-of-town visitors coming for a weekend visit, complete with culture, late-night entertainment (if city fathers would give Duany’s suggested 4 a.m. nightlife closing a try), and a stop at the RISD Museum. "People are doing it now," he says. "We get people from all over New England for the Fools’ Ball." But if the city pursues a 1 a.m. closing time and other reactionary tactics, he says, it will have the opposite effect, driving away potential visitors.

Lupo, who says things are going pretty well in his new location at the Strand, nonetheless notes that the national live music business isn’t exactly thriving these days. "I wish City Hall and the State House would embrace the nightclubs, and especially live music venues as integral parts of the downtown environment," he says. "Right now, I think we’re being viewed more as enemies than friends."

For her part, Kim Snow, a 30-year-old Alice Building resident and secretary of the Downtown Neighborhood Alliance, relishes the polyglot eclecticism of downtown. "The reason I live downtown is because it’s fun and it’s loud and it’s social," she says, citing the ease with which she can walk to AS220, Murphy’s, the Red Fez, tazza, and other destinations. "I’d hate for the residential presence to pull that back in any way."

ASKED ABOUT top needs, downtown residents typically mention a supermarket and more parking.

Buff Chace and Thomas Deller, Providence’s director of planning and development agree on the need for several thousand more downtown parking spaces, but the path to achieving this goal remains uncertain. Chace calls for a public-private partnership to replicate the kind of garage that he and two relatives, Kim and Liz Chace, plan to build on the Travelers Aid site. The garage will offer about 200 spaces for downtown residents, and the remainder for shoppers. "We’re competing with free parking in the suburbs," Chace notes. "We don’t have enough on-street spaces to support thriving retail." Deller agrees on the need for the parking, but says it remains to seen how it can be done. Developers, he says, have "got to come in with a clear ask."

On a more profound level, with the relocation of Interstate 195 opening more land, planners to hope to see downtown Providence connected more closely with surrounding neighborhoods, particularly the Jewelry District, Old Harbor, Capital Center, and the West Side. The city last week awarded a six-figure contact to Sasaki Associates to create a new vision for more closely linking these discrete areas. "I think we are at the beginning of a major transformation," Deller says, although the question remains of whether the city will be able to take the next step.

Ian Donnis can be reached at idonnis@phx.com.