RI+URBlog

Vacation!

Just wanted to post something to let everyone know that the URBlog will be out of town for a week or so. See you in June, hopefully with some insights on four or five North American cities, and perhaps a little review of Jane Jacobs's new book.

Bristol Leads the Charge

"Business untended ... will in fact turn [downtown] into a mall." -Bristol Resident Keith Maloney

"If you're going to bring business to Bristol, you play by our rules." - Councilman Raymond Cordeiro

Bristol, RI, home of the nation's oldest Fourth of July parade, just passed some zoning regulations that will essentially restrict chain restaurants in the historic downtown district. The scope of the codes could make Bristol a model for other communities concerned about the effects of homogenized commerce on their sense of place. Well, most likely a model for other rich communities who can afford to play hardball with developers and franchisees.

We applaud this, if for no other reason than to protect Bristol Bagel Works, the best bagels in the state.

Will other Rhode Island communities follow suit? So far I've heard nothing about it, but I'm sure local governments are looking at it, especially in places like East Greenwich and North Kingstown. Some chains in Providence (Home Depot springs to mind) have made aesthetic concessions, but there's not much resistance to the actual type of business that comes in.

Here's what got this ball rolling.

Capital Center Play-by-Play

This week's David Brussat column sounds many of the same notes the URBlog discussed here. He's rightly concerned for the soul of Capital Center if proposed designs for parcels 2 and 9, the two currently empty lots on either side of Waterplace Park, are built as envisioned. Waterplace is the keystone of Capital Center, and surrounding it with typical "glassy, boxy suburban glitz" could remake this unique, inspiring place into nothing special.

For reference, here's a scan of the Providence Business News image mentioned in the column (thanks Cotuit)

He ends by pointing out that the Capital Center Commission members

-- all of them, to a greater or lesser degree -- are captives of a mindset of "architectural correctness" that has been the conventional wisdom in architecture for decades: Beautiful old buildings should be saved, but new buildings that look anything like those buildings are illegitimate and uncreative.

This is ridiculous, yet it is gospel. We shall see whether the architects (and the developers who hired them) want to please the design elites or the public. Read this space for the play-by-play.

Great point. Also, you can watch this space for play-by-play.

David Brussat is a member of the Providence Journal editorial board. His column on urban design and architecture appear Thursdays on the ProJo commentary page.

Quick Links - Power Lines, EG Land Use, TND in Exeter

Attorney General Patrick Lynch, leading the charge to bury the power lines at India Point in Providence (info), tells the Providence Journal that he predicts the project will get done. They're about halfway to the necessary funding, and plans (and backup plans) are being drawn up to get the rest of the way there. Luckily almost all local leaders are on the same page, knowing that an unmarred landscape at the head of Narragansett Bay is worth far more than the $5 million to be appropriated. Let's hurry up and get it on paper, guys.

In East Greenwich, 9 more acres of farmland are about to bite the dust to make way for an office complex and a self storage facility on Route 2. The EG Town Planner says the project will "expand the tax base for the town of East Greenwich in a way that fits very nicely with the vision the town has for itself." It seems pretty clear to me that the vision for EG is to completely give up on the Route 2 area. After all, why should Warwick be the only one to get in on the horrible congestion on that stretch of road? I shouldn't be too hard on EG, they can only triple their house evaluations so many times...

Down in South County, URI students presented a traditional development plan to expand the tax base while maintaining Exeter's sense of place. The idea calls for quarter and half acre lots (as opposed to the currently mandated FOUR!) for a housing development, both to preserve open space and to create a closer community. Amazingly, town planner said the Town Center is not dense enough! All this bodes well for Exeter and South County in general.

Credit Where Credit is Due

ProJo.com: Taking Credit - The renaissance is being financed with historic preservation tax credits

Huge front page article in today's Providence Sunday Journal about how new (2002) tax credits offered by the state have been more successful than anticipated, leading to maybe $50 million dollars in investment in RI brought in by the new credits.

There's a lot of praise for the state credits, which, when coupled with federal historic building credits make some normally unfinancable projects feasible. The best example of this is the Masonic Temple renovation (can it be a renovation if it was never finished in the first place?) which is finally, honest-to-god going forward. Providence gets a much needed hotel and a beautiful building that would never be built nowadays. Even if the state lost money on those credits it would be worth it. Here's a building, owned by the state, often perilously close to the wrecking ball, that was paying no taxes anyway. If the tax credits gave away any income the state would get from the hotel itself, the city would still win with increased tourism and investment momentum, not to mention the intangible benefits of FINALLY fixing up a landmark of futility.

Cost-benefit analyses are in the works to make sure that the state doesn't lose too much revenue, but I'd argue a program like this, especially now, would be a success as a money loser (though breaking even or better is obviously preferred). There's no push to dismantle the program, of course, just scale it back. We'll be watching, but for now, kudos to the RI Lege.

RELATED: The Providence City Council gets in on the tax break action - Foundry wins tax break from council.

Big Box in Rural RI

Providence Phoenix: Is Wal-Mart Inevitable?

The excellent Ian Donnis has good story on the impending Wal-Martization of Hopkinton, RI, a rural community off Rte I-95 near the Connecticut border. Em talked about the town council selling their constituents out a while back. Check out the article.

Transit Oriented Design on the Horizon?

ProJo.com: Cicilline urges study of transportation needs in Providence area

Prov Mayor David Cicilline wants the lege to create a commission to study transportation issues holistically in the state's urban center. He wants the General Assembly to create a 17-member legislative study commission on transportation and appropriate $375,000 for the study. Besides Providence, the study area would include North and East Providence, Central Falls, Pawtucket, Woonsocket, Cranston and Warwick. Commission members include Grow Smart RI's executive director and the head of RIPTA.

This is a very welcome (and seemingly out of the blue) initiative by the mayor. Smart growth is thrown out there, and with towns like North Providence and East Providence who are currently embracing New Urban principles, there's a good chance that this type of study will lead to reforming some areas with transit-oriented designs.

On the subject of parking, I hope the mayor's director of administration John C. Simmons was misquoted or something when he said: "Maybe we [just] need to build two parking garages that are in an area that could bring people in and out of the downtown area so that we don't have as much congestion either at night or in the morning." I'd like him to explain how inviting more cars downtown will ease congestion anywhere, but whatever. This isn't to say that Providence doesn't need a parking garage or two, one of which is going forward to construction soon.

Unlike his predecessor Buddy Cianci, David Cicilline doesn't get mentioned in the same sentence with the phrase "urban visionary," but if he keeps this kind of forward thinking up, he will be.

BONUS: Here's a free suggestion to the commission: offer incentives to downtown businesses to promote employee bus ridership via discounted or free bus passes. There's an excellent opportunity to test this program as downtown will soon have a large influx of GTECH'ers while their new headquarters will contain only 80 spaces for hundreds of employees.

First Peek at GTECH building

Yesterday's ProJo had an article about the first building to go up in downtown Providence in a decade. To be built on the first dirt lot you see when entering downtown from Rt 95, the GTECH building will occupy an amazingly important spot in Capital Center, as both a gateway to the city and one of the buildings that will urbanistically define Waterplace Park.

The article includes these two sketches, which are fine teasers, but we want more!

I'd go to these Design Review Committee meetings if I wasn't 1,500 miles away, so I can't tell you more about the design. David Brussat's not happy, though. I share his disdain for anything modernist, so I'm a bit concerned. There will be, I think, three separate terraces at different levels, which is not something I'd like to see on a building in this urban setting. Terraces tend to mess with cornice lines and can give a building an uneven feel.

The desired setbacks, to allow sidewalks up to three times wider than normal, seems like an excellent idea. At 11 stories, the extra width between building edge and the mall won't be a problem. I really like the parking garage bridge from Francis Street which marks the pedestrian entrance to Waterplace (you can see it in the first sketch).

In the second sketch you can get a better idea of what the outside walls will look like. Note the lack of adornment on the windows, which I hate. That will mean the GTECH building will look more like One Citizens than the new Marriott.

The Design committee "raved" about the design, so it looks like this building will get built close to as is. Em says she's heard this story before and won't believe it until they cut the ribbon. I'm getting to the point where you could put almost anything there and I'd be happy. This spot has been undeveloped for far too long. The original plan for Capital Center called for all the land to be filled in by now, and we're not even halfway there. We even lost the Gravity Games because of a plan to develop this site that ended up falling through (here's what we would have gotten had it been built).

The guys at Art in Ruins have more, though they want something even more modern! NO!

Here's a couple shots I took last September of the building site.