A Cry for Help

Remember last month when I got an email from ProJo urban design columnist David Brussat about a Cry for Help post? Well, we got to talking and he mentioned he'd have to do a new column, visiting Providence five years from now. Today's edition of the Providence Journal has that column (which means A Cry for Help is obviously shaping the events of the outside world, though we weren't mentioned in the write up. Such is the life of the movers and shakers, behind the scenes, I guess).

It's a great piece, which made me laugh out loud more than once. There are some more, shall we say, optimistic ideas in there, my favorite being the parking garages financed through a tax on modern architecture (though if that were to work I suppose it would mean a lot more nasty buildings…)

Mirroring a scary trend in quasi-governmental homeowners associations, a Downtown Neighborhood Association grabs the reins of power and installs a benign dictatorship of some sort (I'd imagine, as only a heavy hand could root out corruption and placate taxpayers, businesses and unions all at once).

There are a lot of great ideas in there that are more realistic, too, especially fast tracking good development, noise and graffiti control and later closing times for clubs and restaurants. Sadly, for that last one, the trend in Providence has been towards earlier closings. Living in New Orleans, where some bars never close, I can tell you that this system works much better than PVD's currently mandated expulsion of drunk, angry and/or horny young people into the streets all at once.

I didn't think it could get any better than the idea of Governor Laffey (hundreds pink flamingoes on the State House lawn!), but the special guest towards the end was just a pleasure. Go read it!

(in an act of eCivil Disobedience, I've cut an pasted the column in the "keep reading" section below, that way non-RI readers don't have to be interrogated to enjoy this post)

David Brussat: Postcard from Providence 2009
08:33 AM EST on Thursday, January 22, 2004

IT IS WITH SADNESS that I am obliged to report that the best way to describe my vision for downtown would still be to reprint a column I wrote that was published on March 4, 1992, called "Postcard from Providence 1997."

In it, I predicted a downtown "filled with artists and students from RISD and Johnson & Wales, whose graduates own, manage and often even live above many of the new restaurants, clubs and swank galleries here. There are groceries, laundries, delis, newsstands — it's a bustling neighborhood now. It even has movie theaters competing with the mall's videoplex."

In "Postcard from Providence revisited," on Jan. 9, 1997, I recapitulated my dismal prognosticatory attempt of five years earlier and expressed regret that my vision had not been realized. Waterplace and the river walk were done, but only one building had arisen along the river since 1991. Providence Place was unbuilt. In Downcity, the commercial core, almost nothing had changed in five years.

But today, things are definitely looking up. The mall was finally built in 1999, and in 2004, a dozen years after "Postcard from Providence 1997″ was written, Downcity is at last turning the corner. It is time to hazard another set of predictions.

So here is "Postcard from Providence 2009″:

* * *

Flew into Green at noon, grabbed train to city, and checked into Hotel Providence, in the Downcity section. [Insert quote from above: "It's a bustling neighborhood now," etc.] Had some time before my meeting, so I tried to find one of the theaters competing with the mall's videoplex. As I walked, I glanced into a café, tazza, and saw Metropolis, the 1927 silent film, playing against a wall. Was this it?

Went inside and asked the bartender. She said I must mean the DVDplex next to the grocery on the ground floor of the Downtown Neighborhood Association (DNA) Building, their ornate new French Renaissance headquarters farther up Westminster.

The bartender beamed with pride when she told me she had been present on Jan. 18, 2004, when the DNA held its launch party at tazza. She said she had adjusted the sound for the mike, which got the ball rolling. The DNA (one of whose members was The Journal's David Brussat) became a powerful force. It lobbied City Hall to cut business and property taxes, solve the fiscal crisis, modernize municipal services by ending political logrolling, union featherbedding and managerial favoritism, provide one-stop licensing for entrepreneurs and developers, legalize nightclub and restaurant operating hours until 5 a.m., give the police a free hand against motorcycle noise, litterbugs, graffiti and car alarms, finance garages with a tax on modern architecture, and install period lampposts throughout downtown (courtesy of Governor Laffey's new Department of Historical Character). The rest was history. A DNA president was even elected mayor back in 2006.

The city's renaissance had finally reached beyond WaterFire. Suburban and out-of-state college grads and empty-nesters moved by the thousands into new lofts generated by the honest, streamlined, professional planning system. Taxes paid by the skyrocketing childless populations of the Downcity, Capital Center, Promenade, Jewelry and Old Harbor districts financed school reform, which, along with Total Commuter Burnout Syndrome (TCBS), attracted suburban families back to the city, rejuvenating the neighborhoods almost overnight. Local artists capitalizing on the decorating boom could finally afford Downcity rents, or even the low, rambling Beaux Arts condo complex designed by Quinlan Terry, Prince Charles's favorite architect, at Confluence Park after One Citizens Plaza (1991) was demolished. You can see the State House from downriver again! Nobody asks about tax breaks for artists anymore. This month, the city made the cover of Newsweek for the first time in 20 years.

Well, as I pondered all this, a man with hound-dog eyes and a rug came in and sat at the bar.

He looked right at me. "You a visitor? I was mayor once. What you see all started on my watch."

The bartender rolled her eyes. I smiled.

The man continued. "I put the glass blowers behind all of these shop windows. I saved PPAC. I moved the rivers. I walked on WaterFire. Nobody gives me credit anymore, but the fact is, if I had not gone to jail, none of the rest would have happened."

The bartender nodded. "Can't deny that," she said, pouring him a Scotch.

I was confused, so I left. I am writing to you from a rooftop restaurant called L'Apogee, at the Biltmore Hotel. From here you can see the latest skyscraper in the Financial District, 55 stories tall. I told my waiter it could almost be the Woolworth Building, relocated stone by stone from New York.

"It is," he said.

Hmm. Booming place. Wish you were here.
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David Brussat is a member of The Journal's editorial board. His e-mail is: dbrussat [at] projo.com.