Affordable Housing in the Works for Parcel 9

aerial public rendering by The Architectural Team, Inc., 2020 

With construction scheduled to start in late 2023, Fox Point residents hope that their collaboration on the project will fuel a better future for the area, offering a semblance of historic reparation and rejuvenation for the neighborhood. “It’s a hell of a commitment,” says Sharon Steele, president of the Jewelry District Association and long-time local leader. “It takes a village.”

In the early 1900s, a bustling city was en route to becoming a cultural anchor of the East Coast. Once one of the wealthiest cities in the US, with successful manufacturing and maritime industries, Providence was on the fast track to urban prosperity. A patchwork of unique neighborhoods–from Irish to Portuguese–blossomed and engaged with each other in the city’s accessible layout. Everything was looking rosy for Providence residents… until the end of the 1920s. The Great Depression. The New England Hurricane of 1938. The 1939 Recession. Mass suburban flight. Large industries leaving in droves. The workforce slashed. And a new capital of organized crime. Blow after blow; Providence was reeling. It only took one more major event to solidify the fate of the city: the relocation of the I-195 highway. Fueled by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, I-195’s new route would snake through the city, cutting the Jewelry District off from downtown, truncating East Providence and the rest of the city, and obstructing various neighborhoods from the waterfront. By its completion, the project displaced more than 220 residents and caused demolition of hundreds of businesses and homes.

Being right in the construction’s path, Fox Point was heavily affected, with hundreds of majority-immigrant individuals forced to vacate their homes and businesses. “That particular land was taken from what used to be a robust Cape Verdean community,” says Fox Point Neighborhood Association President Nick Cicchitelli. A bit prickly but wholly knowledgeable about his community, Cicchitelli outlined the patchwork of people that resided in Fox Point prior to the new highway–mainly Cape Verdean, Irish, and Portuguese immigrants–all the while emphasizing the neighborhood’s collective strength.

Regardless of these tight-knit communities, the Providence Redevelopment Agency labeled Fox Point a “blighted area,” giving them the authority to send the highway crashing through. In turn, legacies of Fox Point residents have felt the cavern left behind by I-195.

So, decades later, when a new change was slated in regards to I-195, Fox Point instinctively braced for impact.

In 2007, Rhode Island funded Iway, a massive $660 million project to rip out and relocate the section of I-195 that cut through Providence, reuniting the Jewelry district with downtown and reconnecting crucial pieces of Fox Point.

Iway freed up 30 acres of land, and due to the significance of these spaces, both to their respective communities and to the city’s hopes of urban renewal, Providence created the I-195 District Commission to oversee the redevelopment process. Established in 2011, the Commission was mandated to revitalize the area by attracting businesses and creating jobs while engaging with local voices for feedback. 

That was the plan. In reality, says Steele, the Commission uses monthly public RFP (Request for Proposal) meetings to appease communities, but not often implement their ideas, while instead outsourcing consultants to give advice on which developers to choose. Having dealt with the Commission from the very start, 11 years strong as a vocal stakeholder, Steele insists that the “RFP process is in need of rethinking, reworking, and rewriting. For my purposes, the RFPs leave much to be desired.” 

The Commission failed to develop the District’s 19 individual sites for years. Facing difficulties in attracting businesses to Providence, the Commission had to resort to selling each of its first five parcels for free. City residents clashed with proposed developers and the Commission on just about every project; outsourced consultants (specifically Boston-based Utile Architecture) lacked local perspective. Overall, development of the I-195 District was like swimming in mud. 

A large piece of this puzzle, Fox Point has seven parcels within their domain, spaces that Fox Pointers want to keep mostly residential or small-scale retail, with a focus on low-income commitment and “some kind of commercial, mixed-use activation,” says Cicchitelli. Unlike the Jewelry District and its patrons, which has been pushing for bigger STEM-based businesses for their parcels, Fox Point strives instead for the sense of community that was lost to them in the 1950s. So when developers for Parcel 9, the piece of land across the off-ramp from Trader Joe’s, started showing interest, Fox Point residents mobilized. 

In September 2020, two developers and their architecture partners led the pack in the proposal process, each with distinctive visions and experiences. By the end of the year, the Commission chose Pennrose and The Architectural Team, Inc. (TAT) to develop a mixed use, mixed income apartment complex. The two structure development demonstrated real promise, says Cicchitelli of Penrose's proposal, with many amenities and intentions supported by Fox Point residents. 

public rendering by The Architectural Team, Inc., 2020

To their surprise, Pennrose, the Boston-based developer, reached out to the Fox Point Neighborhood Association right away to establish a working relationship. Unlike the hastier and disengaged development of Fox Point’s other parcel (Parcel 6, a mixed-use project involving Trader Joe’s), residents were able to see their ideas incorporated into the development. Outside of the RFPs, Pennrose’s Rebecca Schofield visited Fox Point regularly to meet with the FPNA. For months, the FPNA would come to the table with demands from the community and Pennrose would go back to the drawing board to meet them. 

“It’s important to keep in mind that we’re mostly all volunteers,” says Cicchitelli when asked how the FPNA goes about working with Pennrose. Long hours outside of day jobs piled up for FPNA leadership but nevertheless they pushed forward. “Our role is to basically be as loud as we can about certain things we’d like to see happen.” Throughout 2020 and 2021, Cicchitelli organized the association to advocate for modifications to multiple aspects of the development. One such example is the updates made to the facades of the two buildings. The FPNA recommended that the complex have better exterior synergy. Essentially: make the two structures look more connected. TAT found ways to accomplish this by matching the color palette and gradient of outer materials and altering the size and direction of ledges to line up on both building exteriors. Additionally, in 2022, the Commission’s consultant Utile worked with Fox Point residents to draft a memorandum for adding a play area to the complex for use by the childcare facility and residents of the buildings. 

Latest proposal updates by TAT include the play area.

Yet the work on both ends continues. Fox Point’s newest crusade comes down to what neighborhood architect and FPNA representative Leslie Myers calls “human scale design.” 

Human scale design refers to the principle of centering people within a project, prioritizing accessibility and optimal use. Myers has been working relentlessly, she said, to convince Pennrose and TAT that the disconnect between their vision and the needs of the community stem from a conceptual misunderstanding of the development’s role in Fox Point and Providence. As such, FPNA has identified the final obstacles for the developers: courtyard design and parking.

TAT designed two buildings that leave enough room in between to create a communal area. Their original proposals in early 2020 utilized the space as a one-way carport, allowing residents to enter a garage to the right. Initial renderings, with pedestrians and bikers attempting to weave their way through the carport rather unnaturally, displayed the confusion that would ensue from this design. To top it off, TAT threw in a scattering of benches that act as the only interaction between human and environment. 

initial courtyard/carport concept, public rendering by The Architectural Team, Inc., 2020

FPNA has repeatedly expressed their demand for the space to be utilized as a community courtyard, with Myers stating that it should be the “social heart and soul” of the project as it stands as a doorway between Fox Point and the rest of Providence. In June 2020, the FPNA worked with Utile to develop a counter-proposal for an engaging patio design that connected the two buildings instead of splitting them via traffic. TAT adopted the courtyard concept and for the next year, suggestions from the FPNA could be seen making appearances in design updates. 

revised courtyard concept, public rendering by The Architectural Team, Inc., 2021

Still, Myers wasn't entirely pleased with the layout, again citing vision discrepancies. In an email sent to the Commission in late 2022, Myers voices the FPNA’s acceptance of Pennrose’s recent proposal, all but the courtyard. “I urge the Commission to vote to approve the Pennrose revised conceptual design,” she states, “...with the stipulation that Pennrose add a team consultant of explicit ‘human-scale’ design.” Cicchitelli further pushes this demand in the most recent written correspondence to the Commission, stating that the courtyard should be “treated as a destination rather than a pass-through,” calling for Pennrose and TAT to address the design immediately. 

As of now, they have yet to give out an updated proposal.

Cicchitelli and the FPNA have also been calling for better parking design as the limited number of spots and the subsequent issue of traffic poses a threat to Fox Point. For the 130 unit complex (likely to have over 200 inhabitants), only 50 spots are allocated for residents. “There is a certain movement that thinks that we are such a green and futuristic city that we don’t need to think about [parking] but that’s not particularly the case,” says Cicchitelli. Overall, “there’s not a whole lot of thought being put into where all the cars are going to go.”

This kind of development oversight has already been experienced by Fox Point residents in regards to the development of Parcel 6. The traffic caused by the new Trader Joe’s continues to cause uproar, with the tight and complicated system of parking regularly backing up South Main and Wickenden Street. For Parcel 9, many voices in Fox Point have been speaking up to ward off a similar situation. In particular, Pastor Joseph Escobar of Our Lady of the Rosary, the church bordering the site, fears what will happen to his congregation and the neighborhood if more parking spaces aren’t added to the new development. 

view of development next to Our Lady of the Rosary Church, public rendering by The Architectural Team, Inc., 2020