Investing in Weybosset’s revival

PUSHING FORWARD: Clark Schoettle, left, executive director of the Providence Revolving Fund, and James Hall, of the Providence Preservation Society, are pushing for a revitalization of Weybosset Street. / PBN PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN
PUSHING FORWARD: Clark Schoettle, left, executive director of the Providence Revolving Fund, and James Hall, of the Providence Preservation Society, are pushing for a revitalization of Weybosset Street. / PBN PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN

With its vacant shopping mall, potholes and propped-up, empty bank facade, Providence’s lower Weybosset Street resembles a Hollywood back-lot version of a city after the stars have gone home.
The neighborhood may be far from its heyday, but an aggressive historic-restoration campaign by the city and preservation community is sparking a series of investments designed to revive the Downcity financial district from the beating it took in the Great Recession.
“There is definitely something positive happening, and I think people might start understanding that there is money to be had and that there is life down here,” said David O’Brien, owner of Picture This gallery and framing shop on Weybosset. “It is not a ghost town and not a bad place to be. We have been here five years and seen it dwindle. Now it is becoming more positive.”
The project that’s generated the greatest early excitement on Weybosset, even though its contribution will be largely cosmetic, is a plan to move the steel bracing that holds up the Providence National Bank façade off the street and sidewalk, and behind the structure.
“Hooray – and you probably don’t need the telephone to hear me say it,” said Robert Burke, owner of Pot au Feu restaurant on Custom House Street, when asked for his feelings on the plan. “The decline in the downtown over the past eight years was like a fall off a cliff.”
And there are more conventional redevelopment projects under way in the area that could have more lasting impacts than freeing the street of a steel eyesore.
Across the street from the bank façade, the former Equitable building, also known as the Custom House building, is in the process of a full renovation that will see a new restaurant and lounge on the lower floors and new office space on the third through fifth floors.
Nearby on Orange Street, the new Congress Tavern recently opened after a full renovation of the building that once hosted Adler’s photography shop.
Toward Dorrance Street, a cluster of three buildings sold by utility National Grid last year – the Teste Block, Providence Gas building and the Narragansett Hotel Garage – are in the late planning stages for restoration into mixed-use buildings with shops on the ground floor and apartments above. All five of the above renovation projects and the façade-improvement plan have received or are in talks for help from the Providence Revolving Fund, which administers loans through a $7.2 million Downcity Loan fund established by The Rhode Island Foundation.
“Our loan pool is available for the entire historic downtown, but especially because of the façade and the way lower Weybosset started to go into decline, we have been trying to focus on that area,” said Providence Revolving Fund Executive Director Clark Schoettle. “We are really anxious and excited to see something happen.”
The Revolving Fund loaned $750,000 to the Equitable building project, $300,000 to the Congress Tavern building and is in talks with the owner of the Teste-Providence Gas-Garage buildings about loans as well, Schoettle said.
Perhaps no property in the financial district is being watched as closely as the historic Arcade building, considered one of the first enclosed shopping malls in the country and on the Providence Preservation Society’s top 10 list of most-endangered buildings in the city. It has been closed since 2008.
At a ceremony for the façade plan, Schoettle referred to impending “plans” for the Arcade, but said only the owners of building, Granoff Associates, could go into any further detail.
Granoff Associates did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
Weybosset merchants bemoan the closing of the Arcade not only for the loss of foot traffic from shoppers visiting the stores there, but also for the link that it provided to Westminster Street, the city’s primary retail artery.
Next door to the Arcade, the rusted, steel bracing holding up the National Bank façade has become not only an eyesore that seemed to repel foot traffic, but a symbol of the failed plans and declining fortune of the neighborhood over the last decade.
Six years ago, the Providence National Bank property was primed to become part of the site of the city’s tallest building, a 40-story condominium tower that would retain the old façade.
All but the façade of the circa-1950 bank building was demolished, but before a tower could rise in its place, the housing bubble burst and the development partnership, which included Granoff and O’Connor Capital Partners, suspended the project indefinitely. Many financial-district business owners were counting on a surge in foot traffic and an influx of new residents to the neighborhood from the 130 new units planned for the project.
While everyone waited for the market to turn around, the city and preservation community worked to keep the façade from being torn down, even if the lot behind it was destined to become a parking lot.
After limping along for years, the Arcade was closed in 2008 to be renovated for a single tenant that never materialized.
“The area [has] lost 75 percent of its foot traffic since the Arcade closed,” O’Brien said. “It separated us from Westminster Street and people didn’t want to walk all the way around the Turk’s Head building and façade bracing.”
The plan to get the steel bracing moved to the inside of the structure was the result of an initiative from the Providence Preservation Society, Mayor Angel Taveras and the Revolving Fund that they took to property owner O’Connor Capital Partners.
In addition to moving the bracing to the back, O’Connor agreed to restore the masonry of the roughly 11-foot-thick, brick edifice in exchange for a $100,000 loan from the Revolving Fund. If and when the façade is incorporated into a permanent building on the property, the loan becomes a grant.
Brian Fallon, a partner with O’Connor, said the firm still intends to build some version of their hotel-residential project on the site, but right now “nothing is viable.”
In the interim, O’Connor intends to put a temporary surface parking lot on the land behind the façade to produce some revenue “until the economy turns around,” Fallon said.
James Hall, executive director of the Providence Preservation Society, said even though the National Bank façade isn’t that old, its link to the city’s financial sector and place in the street-scape make it worth the cost of preservation.
“When you look at most buildings in downtown districts, most people never go inside them, but the façades belong to everyone,” Hall said. •

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