What a profound jackass and insufferable snob. Let's shred his deeply misleading arguments straight from the top, shall we?:
"one of Providence’s great urban design failures, the carving of the city in half by Interstate 95."
Interstates are FEDERAL projects. Why on earth is he assigning authorship/ownership to the municipality?!?
"Who but an architecturally insensitive developer with a limited sense of history and understanding of what makes successful cities would even suggest that Providence needed another everywhere-and-anywhere tower?"
Oh, I don't know--maybe one who's merely cognizant of the fact that our great metros desperately need more housing, given the nation's catastrophic housing crisis?
"Despite all the whining about the need for housing, the TPG scheme would add only 216 apartments for the well-to-do while adding nothing to the commonwealth."
Let them eat cake, eh? Yep, definitely no nationwide housing crisis to see here. What's the point of building anything, eh? And, yeah, definitely no new property taxes or economic multiplier effect to be realized here!
"Tall buildings make sense only in a city with scant available land, while Providence has an intact, walkable downtown."
One has nothing to do with the other. Manhattan is defined by a supremely intact walkable downtown while being rampantly suffused with skyscrapers.
"They remove people from the daily commerce of the city"
Oh really? You got studies to prove that? People who live in downtown residential towers don't go out in their neighborhoods to eat, drink, shop?
"Neighborhoods are being assaulted by out-of-scale projects"
No kidding? Have you filed a police report? Taken victim impact statements? "Assaulted" is absurdly subjective, naked NIMBYism.
"We have done some things absolutely right, such as uncovering the Providence River. But mistakes (some surprising for such an intellectually and artistically endowed city) continue to remind us of how we ought to aim a little higher. Whenever I greet visitors to Providence who come by train, I am both embarrassed by the grimness of the platform–who would want to disembark here?–and wonder why we accepted such a depressing gateway to our town."
The daylighting of the Providence River/creation of Waterfire ampitheater/relocation + construction of new AMTRAK station are inextricably intertwined. Yes, the station is drab--but the station also got you Waterfire and the Providence River daylighted, along with Providence Place Mall. To not acknowledge that the daylighting of the river and the train station are conjoined is grossly irresponsible.
"He likes to remind people that the Ivy League is merely a collegiate athletic conference."
Really? That's your ice-breaker at cocktail parties? STFU.
