I’ve often seen gentrification as a difficult problem to tackle. For many of my friends—young, working people trying to live in diverse areas and support themselves on small, non-profit or public service salaries—it is a struggle to find housing without becoming an agent of gentrification. But a New York Times piece today about Mount Morris Park, a traditionally-black Harlem neighborhood, explores one of the uglier examples of that phenomenon.

Timothy Williams chronicles the recent dispute over the neighborhood’s Marcus Garvey Park where, since 1969, drummers from Africa and the Caribbean have played an important role in shaping the social fabric and dynamic of the place. “The musicians,” he explains, “who play until 10 p.m. every summer Saturday, are widely credited with helping to make the park safer over the years.”

Across the street from the park however, at 2002 Fifth Avenue, is “a new seven-story cream and red brick luxury co-op with a doorman, $1 million apartments and a lobby with a fireplace.” Predictably, there have been some disputes about the character of the neighborhood.

(more…)

I wish I’d made it to more of these sessions — and Tuesday night’s meeting, the only one I was at, devolved into a free-for-all just after I arrived. The (almost) consensus seems that residences don’t make much sense on the waterfront, and I tend to agree with this. Residences can be built anywhere, while water-dependent industry and public uses can, by definition, only be built on the water. And people in high-end condos are likely to agitate against industry and public use immediately adjacent to their ritzy digs. A mixed-use zone that disallows residences strikes me as a reasonable compromise between the competing factions.

Part of the problem with this dynamic, and many analogues, is that the city’s interests don’t clearly align with those of the state: While the ‘ working waterfront‘ provides thousands of jobs (once spin-off is accounted for) the city doesn’t seen any direct money from sales or income taxes there — all of that revenue goes to the state. If the Providence’s coffers saw a direct cut of the economic activity that takes place within the city’s borders, it’d have a much greater incentive to encourage the development of industry.

Anyway, here’s Dan’s take on it:

PROVIDENCE — The four-day symposium to debate the future of the Providence waterfront ended last night with one clear feeling voiced by most of the 200 participants: residences do not belong along the waterfront.

At the same time, there was some acknowledgement that a mixed-use zone is possible on the Allens Avenue waterfront, replacing the current industrial zoning. The question is how to accomplish that.

Mayor David N. Cicilline, who supports mixed-use zoning on the waterfront, convened the charette to assess whether the current zoning should be changed as the city rewrites its Comprehensive Plan, the backbone of its zoning and planning law.

The Planning Department’s waterfront charette runs from Monday-Thursday, at the Johnson and Wales Harborside Campus, as part of the city’s comprehensive planning effort.

Broadly, we’ll be trying to determine how best to use the Providence waterfront: where industrial uses are appropriate vs. where there should be housing or commercial structures vs. where there should be open space, and how to reconnect the city and its residents with the water.

(The image above is a rendering of what the former Shooters site, west of India Point Park, could look like, with a variety of community and water-dependent uses.)

I’m heading down to Promet in a bit, for a tour of the “Working Waterfront.”

It’s worth checking out the Providence Working Waterfront Alliance’s website, to get a sense of the breadth of work that goes on down there — along with plenty of photos (don’t know exactly what to make of the tag-line at right), and a history of the port.

Great first meeting last week:

Organizers expected to see about 70 people attend their first meeting last Thursday to form a new Rhode Island chapter of the U.S. Green Building Counci l, designed to promote green building standards throughout the state.

More than 100 architects, lawyers, engineers, government officials and scientists showed up and kept talking, even after the meeting was scheduled to conclude at 6 p.m.

“People clapped after every presentation. I had coffee and water to serve, but nobody got up. People were very enthusiastic,” said Connie McGreavy, who headed a steering committee that set up the meeting at the New England Institute of Technology.

Who knew?

Marcus Hotels and Resorts Corp. of Milwaukee said Wednesday that it has been selected to manage the 7th Wave Resort, a $150 million indoor water park project in Rhode Island.

The Hawaiian-themed resort, which will feature 409 rooms, a 75,000 square foot indoor water park, 53,000 square feet of outdoor space and 12,000 square feet of flexible meeting space, is being developed by Dial Family Resorts, an Omaha, Neb., developer of indoor water park family resorts. The firm is also developing an indoor water park resort in Sandusky, Ohio.

Construction of the resort in West Warwick, R.I., just south of Providence, R.I., is scheduled to begin in August 2008, with its opening slated for the first quarter of 2010.

I’m pretty psyched about a few recent restaurant happenings. Two for now:

Stanley’s Hamburgers just opened in the Jewelry District. They sport a classy, cartoony, greasy decor, the usual burgers and seafood, and a really solid veggie burger to boot. (And a website that sometimes actually loads.) They’re open til 2am every night, and make for great post-Nick-a-Nee’s grub.

Also, Victoria’s has opened at 184 Ives Street. Having lived within a few blocks of there for the last 5+ years, I’ve seen a number of spots fail miserably: Ives St. Pizza, that weird coffee shop, the Ethan Ris/Richard Pacheco campaign HQ, and, most recently Amici’s.

Victoria’s seems like the first place that might actually last: a menu that makes sense, delivery, 2am close — and even cigars and cigs, for folks who indulge in such nonsense.

After a 5-year wait, we’re going to be doing neighborhood planning for  a good chunk of the East Side, mourn what could have been, and ponder how we got by for so long.

Meetings are held during the days and evenings all week long, per this schedule.  Parks and green space are sure to be high on the agenda.  There’s a separate waterfront planning series coming up, but that’ll be an issue too.

Speeding.  Graffiti.  Overnight parking.  Institutional growth.  Peskiness by Brown students and/or people who might be mistaken for pesky Brown students.

And I’m hopeful that we can have some serious discussion about transit, economics, and housing.

It is really great that this is finally happening.  Please come on out.

We had a well-attended and lively forum at DARE last night.  Dan Barbarisi covers it here.

The headline, which Dan didn’t write, is a bit awkward: ‘Citizens brainstorm against gentrification in low income areas.’  There were certainly many non-citizens present, and non-citizens are likely impacted by gentrification at a higher rate than are citizens.  Maybe we’re just using the colloquial, or recognizing that we’re all citizens of the earth, or something gentle like that.

I’m gonna be super-uncouth, and cite my own quote, to clarify it:

To state Rep. David Segal, a former Fox Point city councilman who represents the area in the Assembly, there is no easy answer to how to make it work for everyone.

“Without a real shift in our governance and tax structures, and a whole slew of things, I pretty much see it as an impossible situation,” Segal said.

The structure of the political process rewards leaders who gentrify, he said. Politicians come into office promising great change, he said, and changing the economic level of a neighborhood can be a politically infallible strategy.

When gentrification occurs, those who are displaced move elsewhere and likely can’t vote on the councilman or mayor anymore, and the newcomers are happy in their new neighborhood. Those residents who can afford to live there as the demographic changes are probably pleased…

(more…)

there are events relating to this exhibit all month long.  details after the jump:

We Shall Not Be Moved: Gentrification, Displacement, and the Right to the City

April 14 - May 15, 2008
A Project About Gentrification in Providence and Beyond

Poster Exhibitions:
“We Shall Not Be Moved: International Graphics on Gentrification,
Homelessness & Resistance”
April 14 - May 15
Providence City Hall, 25 Dorrance St.
CLOSING RECEPTION: May 9, 5-8 pm (more…)

All day today:

The 23rd Annual RI Statewide Historic Preservation Conference

Saturday, April 12 in Providence’s South Side and West End

Preservation Past, Present, and Future

This is certainly a step in the right direction, though obviously doesn’t contend with all of the problems that come with displacement — of businesses or homes — that follow from gentrification.

PROVIDENCE -  Mayor David N. Cicilline, Councilman Luis Aponte and representatives of the Partnership for Creative Industrial Space will announce the passage of a landmark City Ordinance designed to protect jobs by assisting small businesses and artists who may be displaced by City-supported redevelopment projects.

The news conference and signing ceremony will be held on Thursday, April 10 at 10:30 a.m. at MEDPort, LLC, located at 99 Hartford Avenue in the Contech medical building (located in the rear of the mill complex, across the street from the U.S. Post Office) in Olneyville.   A business owner and local artists who have been displaced by redevelopment projects will be among those attending the news conference….

The ordinance makes a building owner consider the impact of rehabilitation efforts on existing commercial tenants.  The compliance of this ordinance is necessary for the building to be eligible for any city subsidy.

1.  Requires a 90 day notice to all tenants, regardless of current lease
2.  Pays a ’stipend’ based to help businesses with relocation based on number of employees:
1-2 employees:  $2500
3-5 employees:  $5000
6-9 employees:  $7500
10 employees or more: $10,000

A number of us spent much of today cooped up in the Radisson on Gano St — but also drove through the still-being-relocated India St. and 195, while trying to figure out how to not get run over or stuck in the tar pits. Things are shaping up at an impressive clip, and it’s getting easy to envision the new-and-improved India Point Park and all of the potential it holds for the city and state.

And so that’s what we were doing — partaking of a ‘place-making’ exercise, hosted by Friends of India Point Park and the Project for Public Spaces.

(more…)

Brown’s looking to keep building on College Hill — despite repeated pledges to focus new med related development in the Jewelry District:

Brown plans to build the mind-brain behavior building between 127 and 135 Angell St. as the home of its psychology, cognitive and linguistic science and brain science departments.

And it’s even more problematic because of what’s likely to be displaced:

Two of the buildings are residences: 127 Angell St., a three-apartment rental house built in 1853, and 129 Angell St., a house built in 1851. The third is Brown’s Urban Environmental Lab, the 1885 Sharpe family carriage house, which was renovated in the 1980s as an early “green” building.

I’m especially sympathetic to the UEL, having done vegan Thanksgivings there a couple of years before I even moved to Providence, and having been in countless meetings there over the years. It’s a hub of activism, of historic importance, and much more conducive to fostering community than are most of the institutional behemoths that surround it.

But with such transience on campus, time is always on the administration’s side…

The Journal says that there’s finally, almost, a plan to govern the sale of property opened up by the highway move. The sooner the better, as one would hope for predictability as Brown and JWU and RISD and the hospitals and the city’s other behemoths battle it out for the land.

PROVIDENCE — The state and the city have struck a deal to give Providence a voice in the sale of the land uncovered when Route 195 is peeled away four years from now — a once-in-a-lifetime property sale that some envision will lead to towering new office buildings that reshape the city’s skyline.

Until this point, the state Department of Transportation has controlled who could buy the property to be made available by the relocation of Route 195, and the city had been angling for a way in. Under an agreement to be officially signed this morning, the city, the DOT, and the state Economic Development Corporation will be partners in determining the future of the land.

Also, follow this link for an awesome aerial photo of downtown — one of the more striking I’ve ever seen taken of Providence.

When all those folks from Olneyville, and Fort Thunder, said that the Shaws at Eagle Square wasn’t going to do much good?   Ehh… I’m already in a super-cynical spot these days, so just read it:

Residents of Providence’s Valley section will have an easier trip for groceries come Sunday as the PriceRite grocery chain opens a store in the Eagle Square shopping center.

The new PriceRite is filling a 55,000-square-foot space left vacant last summer when Shaw’s Supermarkets closed a store. It’s a tactic the Wethersfield, Conn., chain often employs.

“We take over existing buildings,” said Kurt Schultz, a PriceRite spokesman.

The Valley section’s gain is Olneyville’s loss as the PriceRite operation is moving from a smaller building on Manton Avenue, about a mile from Eagle Square. PriceRite had occupied its spot in Olneyville since 1998. PriceRite has five years left on the lease for the Olneyville store, Schultz said, there are no plans yet to sublet the building. The Olneyville store will close tomorrow at 6 p.m