Roger Williams eyes downtown Providence expansion

Before it opened a bucolic Bristol campus in 1969, Roger Williams University was a city school with roots in Providence dating back to 1919.
Those roots are being strengthened as Roger Williams looks to double the size of its Providence branch to expand its adult education and key graduate-school offerings.
This summer, a group of university officials is expected to lease new office and classroom space from one of five downtown buildings with vacancies.
The move will again grow the higher education presence in Providence, something that’s become even more pronounced in recent years as demand for space from corporate tenants has wavered.
And for Roger Williams, expanding its Providence footprint is part of a broader growth strategy focused on graduate and continuing studies.
“The growth area in higher education is not the 18-year-old residential freshman – that is a declining demographic,” said Roger Williams University President Donald J. Farish. “But we do see a lot of unmet needs on the part of the adult population, people who want to finish an undergraduate degree, get a certificate in something like cyber security, or get a master’s.”
With more space downtown, the university will be able to grow continuing education and, by offering more experience-based learning, enrollment at the law school and likely in other graduate fields.
Roger Williams’ Masters of Public Administration program and the MBA program currently in development could also take advantage of the larger downtown space.
“In the old days you could be a lawyer from sitting in a classroom and then figure it out at the first years at a firm,” Farish said. “Today with the competitive job market, the edge goes to the lawyer who arrived knowing how to be a lawyer.”
Farish said Roger Williams didn’t have any projections on how much the law school or any of the programs being discussed for Providence might grow yet. Roger Williams’ current Providence branch is located at 150 Washington Street, which it shares with the Rhode Island Nurses Institute Middle College Charter School.
The university currently occupies about 40,000 square feet of the 75,000-square- foot, four-story building, with 627 students currently taking classes there, the vast majority of them in continuing education.
The school’s lease expires in May 2014, prompting the search for larger, alternative sites.
An initial request for bids drew a dozen responses, Roger Williams narrowed the list of sites down to five:
• One Empire Plaza, the former home of 38 Studios LLC.
• 75 Fountain St., home of The Providence Journal.
• 111 Fountain St., the vacant Fogarty Building.
• 60 Eddy St., home of Big Nazo Lab.
• One Weybosset Hill, the former home of Cookson America, where Johnson & Wales University has a first-floor shop.
One vacant building that has been ruled out is 111 Westminster St., also known as the Superman Building, which is too large for the school’s needs.
Senior Advisor to the President Richard N. Hale, who is heading up the search, said Roger Williams is looking for between 70,000 and 85,000 square feet of space with some floor-plan flexibility.
In addition to some office space for faculty, the new home will need conference, meeting, classroom and lecture space, he said.
Roger Williams Law School Dean David Logan said only final-year students will be based in Providence to be closer to courts and clients.
“Our clinics are where the clients and courts are, which is in Providence,” Logan said.
Farish said the initial plan had been to make a recommendation to trustees May 18, but that doesn’t look like it is going to happen.
Farish added that there is still a possibility that none of the sites will work out.
“Until board makes a decision, we’re still kicking the tires,” Farish said. •

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