Providence developments

That would be great. Providence could really use some new office space and it looks like maybe they are considering something other than knocking down the Superman Building.
 
U/C The Commons at Providence Station:


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http://www.bldup.com/projects/the-commons-at-providence-station
 
I agree with your OKC observation. The Devon Tower at 850' is 60' taller than the John Hancock Tower and does stick out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of OKC's skyline. The Hope Point Tower is only 100' taller than the Superman, but I think the naysayers primary complaint is due to the more remote location from the main cluster of the Providence skyline. If they were to disassemble the classic Superman building I would prefer that it's moved to Portland, Boston has enough high rises : )
 
Which Portland if you dont mind me asking? I was looking at all of the light rail sytems in the US the other day.... yep nerdy, and I saw that Portland Oregon has one of the most extensive light rail systems in the entire country. I was blown away. Its really nice too. Somehow their "mass" transit is extremely extensive and just north Seattle has nothing-although theyre expanding a lot right now..
 
The original Portland which is located in Vacationland without any light rail systems, but we do have AMTRAK.
 
Gotcha, that you do... and if NSRL ever goes down youll at least be able to travel the eastern seaboard. Its kind of crazy that theyre thinking of it in terms of taking stress off the 2 stations but the eastern seaboard of literally entire states like NH and Maine heavily depend on this as well. They should be behind this as well and maybe even contribute (some) money, because it instantly gives the Northern NE states access to NYC, DC, Philly, Baltimore... and just the same gives those places access to Maine, Eastern NH... Its getting beyond ridiculous. Anyways off track haha...
 
Too bad their light rail plan fell through. I think that really could been a catalyst towards a revival. Providence really is a great little city.

urt_prv-lrt-stc-sim-dntn-night-crowds-x1_city-of-prv.jpg


pvd-streetcar-kennedy-plaza.jpg


suggested-streetcar-route-14Feb11.jpg


https://www.google.com/amp/s/lightrailnow.wordpress.com/2013/06/27/providence-streetcar-plan-hinges-on-federal-funding/amp/

Hopefully this will be revived again it really is a small city ripe for its own boom with the commuter rail, amtrak, airport, i95, and ocean all converging here its in a prime spot. I could definitely see a light rail route that goes from the airport to the mall and downtown as viable. The commuter rail does this but fairly infrequent service compared to what light rail could bring. I think this is what theyre missing weve seen rail cause booms time n time again in other cities.
 
The one thing about that plan that always struck me as odd/bad would be the no direction connection to the existing Amtrak/CR train station. I would think that would be a major must have in a light rail layout for Providence.
 
bakgwailo said:
The one thing about that plan that always struck me as odd/bad would be the no direction connection to the existing Amtrak/CR train station. I would think that would be a major must have in a light rail layout for Providence.
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It's tricky. Kennedy Plaza is PVD's local transit hub and the bulk of downtown density is right around it. In order to run the one light rail line by the Amtrak station, you'd probably have to change the alignment so it doesn't pass through the Kennedy Plaza area, or you'd have to make an extremely circuitous route to the East Side/College Hill to hit both, or opt out of using the East Side Transit Tunnel which I think is a nonstarter.

You could probably plan a "phase 2" 2nd line expansion that runs through Smith Hill and out to Elmhurst or Mt. Pleasant that stops at the station and continues down Exchange before terminating at Kennedy Plaza. That's your connection. Of course, that means taking some of the park/front yard space in front of the station ("Station Park") and using it for tracks/centenary which is never a popular move. However, this is a city that relatively recently allowed a huge chunk of the State House's lawn to be converted to surface parking, so I wouldn't rule it out.
 
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stick n move said:
Too bad their light rail plan fell through. I think that really could been a catalyst towards a revival. Providence really is a great little city.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/lightr...streetcar-plan-hinges-on-federal-funding/amp/

Hopefully this will be revived again it really is a small city ripe for its own boom with the commuter rail, amtrak, airport, i95, and ocean all converging here its in a prime spot. I could definitely see a light rail route that goes from the airport to the mall and downtown as viable. The commuter rail does this but fairly infrequent service compared to what light rail could bring. I think this is what theyre missing weve seen rail cause booms time n time again in other cities.
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Well, since it's dead for the moment the rail pivot Providence should be considering in the nearer term is Urban Rail on the NEC of the kind of :15 bi-directional headway variety that the T is studying for inside Route 128. Only in RI you can instead consider that "inside I-295".

Figure this. . .

  • RIDOT intrastate commuter rail is planning infill stops at Cranston at the RI 12 overpass, East Greenwich at the Rocky Hollow Rd. overpass, and West Davisville at the Devils Foot Rd. overpass. As with the new Pawtucket stop and T.F. Green + Wickford when they get their missing northbound platforms added, these stops will all be quad-track with 2 center Amtrak & freight passers.
  • RIDOT plans to construct a layover yard and joint T/Amtrak maint facility at the Quonset Point railyards just south of Davisville to relieve stress on Pawtucket layover.
  • The old East Junction layover in Attleboro has sat unused since T service to Providence resumed full-time in the 90's.
Therefore, a 23-mile long South Attleboro to West Davisville Urban Rail line would probably work best...or, 25 miles if they want to include Wickford and reverse direction without pulling into a yard. The dip across the MA state line is immaterial because South Attleboro is served by RIPTA buses and is a major walkup catchment for northern Pawtucket.

To make this work with Amtrak traffic, considerably more quad-tracking between stops would need to be added. Right now triple-track is planned contiguous from Pawtucket to T. F. Green anywhere it doesn't already exist, but everything else is 2-track between stops. Tightest squeezes in South Attleboro and East Greenwich, while the rest is pretty easy except for some wetlands to EIS and a few small water bridges needing to be widened. Whether you can pull off the frequencies depends on how much of that contiguous quad-track you can string together to keep the Amtrak racetrack separated from the local tracks. NEC FUTURE traffic modeling may inform where biggest bang for buck is at chipping the 2-track restrictions away.

You'd then need to add a bunch of infill stops.

  • Olneyville was proposed for RIDOT CR, but serving up the land is in flux because of the 6-10 Connector rebuild project...which would need to compact the ramp sprawl around the Broadway/Westminster intersection before there can be a Harris Ave. stop.
  • Others could be a pick-'em of: Roosevelt Ave. (South Attleboro-Pawtucket spacer), Mt. Hope (Pawtucket-Providence spacer), Elmwood (Olneyville-Cranston spacer), Norwood (Cranston-T.F. Green spacer), Apponaug (T.F. Green-East Greenwich spacer)
...for a final stop roster of (transfers in brackets, non-official proposals asterisked):
-- (East Junction layover yard) --
​
  1. SOUTH ATTLEBORO [Boston-Providence RER]
  2. Roosevelt Ave.*
  3. Pawtucket [Boston-Providence RER; Westerly-Woonsocket RER]
  4. Mt. Hope*
  5. Providence [Boston-Providence RER; Westerly-Woonsocket RER; Amtrak]
  6. Olneyville
  7. Elmwood*
  8. Cranston [Westerly-Woonsocket RER]
  9. Norwood*
  10. T.F. Green [Boston-Providence RER; Westerly-Woonsocket RER; Amtrak]
  11. Apponaug*
  12. East Greenwich [Westerly-Woonsocket RER]
  13. WEST DAVISVILLE [Westerly-Woonsocket RER]
-- (Quonset Point layover yard) --
​
Not every single one of these infills is going to merit getting built, so assume a final count of 10-12 stops on this Ocean State Indigo job. Then of course super-size the RIPTA presence at each of these stops to get the last-mile connections set.

The advantage is that the infrastructure investment serves many masters. Most prominently Amtrak when the NEC needs near-complete tri- and quad-tracking through here to support 2040 service levels. That scalability is incredibly valuable for defraying the costs for upgrading the NEC to run :15 Urban Rail headways interference-free. While the Providence Line isn't going to make use of any of these intermediate stops except for Pawtucket and maybe a permanently adjusted presence at T.F. Green, the already-planned stops for intrastate Westerly CR get a massive boost in utilization this way which helps fund the additional Urban Rail infills a whole lot faster than the excruciating slow pace of fund-build-utilization of their current extension stops.

And you can bet your butt that if you're moving that many people into the city from a dozen-mile radius each direction that you're going to need to get that streetcar build pulled out of mothballs and fast-tracked, because critical mass is coming in like a tsunami.
 
The boom in Boston is driven by jobs growth. Companies have been growing here and relocating here. Salaries are soaring in the knowledge economy industries. If you can spark that in PVD (or Worcester or Portland, ME or anywhere) then I think you can catalyze all the development you want. The trick is actually getting the job growth.

The challenge is that it is a chicken and egg problem. If RI government invests heavily into all the infrastructure that PVD needs to be a boom town and the boom never comes, then they are just broke with a bunch of white elephants and everyone involved looks like an asshole. You can see the risks in over-committing with no guarantee anything will pay off. You need to be measured and tactical.

PVD has good urban bones. IIRC, they have made a few positive strides with their bus network and have some pretty major downtown redevelopment going on. If another decade or so of those incremental improvements results in some serious jobs growth, then I think you will see a major transit project take hold. I think if they are smart they'll get a project shovel ready for the next big economic downturn so they can turn on the public money faucet just when the economy needs it most (this is basic fiscal policy 101, I have no idea why our state and federal governments don't know how to do this) and the project can be done just when as economy is recovering and companies are looking for new places to invest. Of course, we are back to there being a chance that nothing good comes of it and they have an underutilized white elephant. At least they will have weathered a recession using sound fiscal policy.
 
I can tell you that the whole mantra of "Build it and they will come" does not work everywhere and would not work in Providence when they don't have the proper infrastructure or investment to attract ten thousands of workers at once so you can stop your fantasy here. If that was the case, Detroit would have turned around decades ago when they were literally paying people and businesses to move there. This isn't Simcity.
 
I think the point is that with so many Northeast coastal cities booming, it's hard to understand why Providence isn't benefiting more. New York and Boston are basically in the midst of their biggest building booms ever, and Portland, Philadelphia, DC, and even Baltimore are also seeing bellwether amounts of construction.

Providence is my 2nd favorite New England city (just edges out Portland by delivering more of a "big city" feel) and seems to be situated in a good location between Boston and NYC. College Hill is gorgeous, Federal Hill is thriving, and the downtown has really excellent bones. However, as mentioned above, the jobs just aren't there right now. It also hurts that the tallest building has been shuttered for 5+ years. I think both Providence and Rhode Island as a whole suffer from classic political mismanagement as much as any other state in the country. When I am there, I just can't understand why the city isn't doing better than it is.

Regarding that new tower, it's supposed to be about 530' which would make it just a few ticks below Hartford's tallest. I have my doubts that it will ever be built, but it's hard to take criticisms like "out of scale" seriously when it's literally a couple empty parking lots away from the tallest buildings downtown. They complain that it will ruin a park, but on the contrary it's going to bring more foot traffic to the park than they could possibly get today. Who is going to walk through multiple blocks of parking lots to get to what appears to be a dead zone? On the other hand, the tallest tower in a city will draw in pedestrians just out of curiosity, and the park will keep them hanging around the area from there. Another uninspiring 6 story dud building isn't going to bring people away from the current downtown core.

Providence is truly at a crossroads. It could kick its revitalization into high gear with this new tower, the Hasbro office building, and a prideful rehab of the Industrial Trust tower. On the other hand, it could cut down or cancel the tower altogether and demolish the city's tallest building when the funding isn't there to save it. I am really hoping that we see a positive resurgence in this city but the small-minded attitudes and political cronyism really hurt the cause.
 
Providences problem is that it is in Rhode Island. Ive heard time and time again from biz leaders how painfully business unfriendly the state is compared to MA which is why it always loses out to MA.

Boston's incredibly lucky that Rhode Island is basically incompetently governed.
 
stick n move said:
Where did I propose simcity... and were not talking Detroit were talking a Northeast corridor city, along the Amtrak route, and a very nice one at that. I said theres lots of potential here and an existing ROW meaning if they can get a system started, they have room to expand along an existing rail ROW or better use whats there. Thats good to have. I didnt say throw up 12 supertalls and a full transit system... The only building I even talked about is the one thats already proposed just being made more iconic and the streetcar is also a previous proposal.

On top of that it kinda is build it and they will come... with transit. Go look at the numbers. Literally every light rail and even street car built has an explosion of growth. So looking at the city it clearly needs a nudge. All I was saying is maybe some type of transit could be that nudge. Not a full blown system, but a start. So maybe that streetcar proposal would have been the nudge afterall needed to grab onto this cycle. Maybe the bus was the wrong idea, judging by the dozens of streetcars going up around the country and the explosive growth around every single one. Or better utilization of what they have but without relying on the MBTA. They would be the second NE city with rail transit, thats a big selling point. I agree build it and they will come is bad.. with buildings, transit not so much. Id argue all day long its much better to have it in place early than late (seaport).

Heres an article saying they should do their own rail system because they cant get extra MBTA trains at peak capacity.
http://www.gcpvd.org/2017/09/06/pbn-the-states-2012-bet-on-commuter-rail-service-has-yet-to-pay-off-is-it-time-to-privatize/

Looking at the light rail or street car numbers all over the country, I dont think theres any argument that they didnt make the wrong decision on the streetcar though. Maybe they could have also benefitted hugely from this cycle that every other American city is if they had done it. So maybe they should be looking at it again. They already have a tunnel, just waiting to be used. One day I hope it is.

Anyways heres another render.
2018-1100-hope-point-edit.jpg


Pawtucket/Central falls CR station u/c
PCF_Main_Img_03.jpg

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1027pawtucket4.jpg

https://pbn.com/pawtucket-central-falls-transit-hub-breaks-ground/
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You were insisting that Providence build out to be the size of Portland. That would require an expansion of their airport, buses, trains, roads, light rail, utility, power, water, waste removal, broadband, wireless capabilities, schools, fires stations, police stations, and etc. Where are all the money going to come from to fund all this?

If you think Mass is expensive because of the taxes, just think how much Rhode Island would have to raise their taxes to fund all these improvements. You really think plopping a couple of stations here and there is enough to make Providence the new Portland? You think banks would hand out municipal loans to a city that has nothing to sustain growth?
 
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stick n move said:
So Massachusetts cant take advantage of these half cent sales taxes that states all over the country are passing to raise billions upon billions of dollars for transit. We're a lost cause with corruption, but I bet Providence starting from scratch could be a mega success.
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This is where most intelligent people will stop reading. Rhode Island is one of the most politically corrupt places on the planet. No amount of naive optimism and glossy skyline pictures can change that fact. I happen to like Providence and I do think it has a lot of potential but with the political and economic climate, it's kind of a wonder it even is what it is right now compared to its peers of Hartford, Worcester and Springfield.

KentXie said:
If you think Mass is expensive because of the taxes, just think how much Rhode Island would have to raise their taxes to fund all these improvements.
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Providence already has ridiculously high property taxes - $19/$1000 with no owner-occupied residential abatement like Boston has - so I doubt many people would be willing to pay even more on the income tax side for the "privilege" of living in Rhode Island or for some fantasy that Providence is going to become the next Portland.
 
No idea if this is a trustworthy source, lots of Cato Institute citations, but . . .

https://www.richstatespoorstates.org/states/RI/

I'm generally a union guy for the private sector, but ranking 50th out of 50 for "right to work" is a pretty business-unfriendly look. But the top marginal corporate tax rate is 7.0%, and that's a full percentage point lower than MA's. From 2007-2017, MA had the country's 9th best GDP growth, while RI was 43rd.

To other forumers' points though: RI doesn't have a niche. It doesn't have the same learning economy MA does; it's less value-add driven and more low-end services-driven. Southern NH - especially near the coast - is a hotspot for startups, especially bio and adtech. Lots of MA spillover. We should be asking, why hasn't there been similar spillover in Providence County?

I am biased, I love RI and spend almost as much time down there as in Mass whenever I'm back in the US. I could eat at Pastiche every day of the week - my wife has made a Pastiche trip compulsory. But the place just cannot seem to shake its image of being business-unfriendly.
 
kmp1284 said:
This is where most intelligent people will stop reading. Rhode Island is one of the most politically corrupt places on the planet. No amount of naive optimism and glossy skyline pictures can change that fact. I happen to like Providence and I do think it has a lot of potential but with the political and economic climate, it's kind of a wonder it even is what it is right now compared to its peers of Hartford, Worcester and Springfield.



Providence already has ridiculously high property taxes - $19/$1000 with no owner-occupied residential abatement like Boston has - so I doubt many people would be willing to pay even more on the income tax side for the "privilege" of living in Rhode Island or for some fantasy that Providence is going to become the next Portland.
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Right.. Intelligent people only read a little bit of something, then stop, and then write a response. That way theyre sure to miss the entire point and respond with nonsense. Got it.

So anyways here was where I was going to try to ask again what I was asking in the first place, but I dont even care about the answer in the first place, and Im not doing this... So yea.
 
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