PRA is spurring rehabilitation projects

A NEW LIFE? Providence Redevelopment Agency Executive Director Don Gralnek at the vacant former Flynn School. / PBN PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO
A NEW LIFE? Providence Redevelopment Agency Executive Director Don Gralnek at the vacant former Flynn School. / PBN PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO

(Updated, Aug. 15, 11:444 a.m.)

The agency marketing the largest portfolio of publicly owned Providence real estate? It’s not the Interstate 195 Redevelopment District Commission.
Rather, it’s the Providence Redevelopment Agency, the city’s quasi-municipal real estate arm, which is playing a central, if largely under-the-radar, role in spurring new construction projects.
Last year, the agency returned from several years of relative inactivity by facilitating the rehabilitation of the George C. Arnold Building on Washington Street and working on the South Street Landing nursing academic-center project in the Knowledge District.
Now in almost every Providence neighborhood, other than the affluent East Side, the PRA, which controls nearly 100 acres citywide, is looking to turn underutilized land reclaimed by the city into productive, taxpaying assets.
Since last summer, it has been working to help a New York City group convert an old mill complex on Cromwell St. in the West End into 52 apartments and a culinary incubator called Rooms and Works. The PRA is subleasing a vacant lot owned by Rhode Island Housing at 36 Cromwell St. to the developer to use for parking.
And last week, the PRA began soliciting bids for the former Flynn School site at 220 Blackstone St. in Upper South Providence, which closed three years ago and has been deemed surplus.
Because of its proximity to the city’s hospital complex, PRA officials see a developer of medical space as the most likely fit.
But like the vast majority of PRA properties, the agency is not limiting itself to a particular kind of user and will sell the 3-acre property to the bid with the greatest value to the city.
That’s not necessarily the bid with the highest dollar value, although it’s a good bet it will be in most cases. Because the PRA is a quasi-government agency, it is not bound by city procurement laws and could look at broader economic considerations such as job creation or neighborhood impacts.
“The high bidder will most likely be in the health care space, but that doesn’t preclude mixed use, such as a hotel with retail,” said PRA Executive Director Don Gralnek about the Flynn School. “We are not constrained in any way.”
Although it doesn’t need to, Gralnek said the PRA will go through a public request-for-proposals process on the Flynn School to dispel any notions of insider dealing. He hopes to release an RFP this month and select the winning bid next month. If all goes as planned, a new owner could be ready to start construction next spring.
The Flynn School is just the first among several properties the city has transferred to the PRA and the agency is either in the process of marketing or will be shortly marketing.
Downtown, the PRA is in negotiations over the vacant lot between Memorial Boulevard, Exchange Street and the post office, with Fall River developer First Bristol Corp., which is eyeing a hotel there.
The city was going to relocate the large bus shelters being removed from Kennedy Plaza at the triangle lot, but now plans to mothball them after the PRA indicated it would complicate negotiations.
The 24,000-square-foot lot was the subject of previous hotel plans, including a bid by Paolino Properties in 2000, that didn’t get off the ground.
Several miles northwest, the former American Tourister factory represents a very different opportunity, with a large expanse of land, but contamination issues and difficult access.
Sitting on 25 acres in Wanskuck near the North Providence line, 9 acres of which are wetlands, the vacant factory had previously been the subject of plans for a senior housing development.
The PRA secured a $400,000 federal brownfields grant for the Tourister property in May and intends to use dirt from the reconstruction of the Interstate 195 land to help clean up contamination there.
Gralnek said he expects the cleanup to be completed in the second quarter of 2015, but doesn’t know what kind of development interest it will see.
“It’s kind of off the beaten track,” he said. “You have to go through the neighborhood to get there. We would be open to any realistic proposals, but whatever it is has to be supported by the community.”
In the West End, the PRA is also feeling out development interest in the former Louttit/What Cheer Laundry site, a roughly 1-acre parcel at 93 Cranston St. behind a Citizens Bank branch. Gralnek said the fact that the property doesn’t have frontage on Westminster is a challenge and he has spoken to Citizens about potentially joining some of their land to it. A request for proposals could also be used for the site, which could be commercial, residential or mixed use.
When the PRA sells a property, it subtracts the cost of work it has had to do to prepare it, then remits 70 percent of the remainder to the city and keeps 30 percent to use for new projects.
Along with marketing large, high-profile parcels, the agency also takes over dozens of lots, buildings and homes that the city has taken title to for unpaid taxes.
By investing in site work or clearing title, the agency can often get the property in the hands of people willing to invest in it, where turning it over to the highest bidder at tax sale often sees properties land-banked and languishing.
In some cases, the PRA looks to turn vacant land over to abutters who agree not to develop it, but take care of it and prevent it from becoming blighted.
The PRA is also involved in a variety of real estate related functions such as administrating funds collected as part of the Eagle Square Tax Increment Financing deal.
In one of its more unique arrangements, the PRA has served as landlord for Belgian thin-film manufacturer Umicore S.A., since 2010, when it purchased the building at 50 Sims Ave. in the Valley neighborhood from Citizens.
The deal was seen as a way to keep Umicore from leaving Providence during the recession-plagued tail end of now U.S. Rep. David N. Cicilline’s time as mayor. The company was rumored to be on its way to Oklahoma.
Now the PRA has agreed in principle to renew Umicore’s 10-year lease and again lower its rent as an incentive to grow. Gralnek would not say how much Umicore has been or will be paying.
And as part of the deal, the PRA will free Umicore of its obligation to demolish the adjacent, unused traffic-court building on Harris Avenue, which is part of the current lease.
Under the new proposed deal, the PRA will take the court property over and market it for commercial development. •

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