CITYWATCH Olneyville artists face abrupt eviction BY IAN DONNIS

About 60 people who have been part of Olneyville’s flourishing underground music scene were facing imminent eviction in sub-freezing weather as this week’s Phoenix went to press. City officials and members of the extended music community have been scrambling to lend assistance since the threat of mass evictions came into sight around January 9, but many of the residents were still said to be without a place to go.

"We’re in a worse situation than we thought we were in," says Yvette Koch, a 26-year-old Ph.D. student at Brown University who has lived in the building at 244 Oak St./71 Troy St. for about 18 months. After previously receiving a deadline of Friday, January 23 for moving out of the building, residents learned late on Tuesday, January 20 that a demolition crew would arrive 12 hours later. After meeting with residents and their supporters at about 7 a.m. on Wednesday, January 21, the demolition crew was dissuaded from entering the building, but city officials were said to be imminently poised to condemn the structure and lock the doors.

Although she accepted the possibility of being bounced from a sketchy living situation in an old industrial building, "I never thought it would happen on this scale," Koch says. "There’s a difference between six people getting evicted and 56 . . . They [city officials] keep mentioning the Station fire. With the Station fire, obviously, we understand the risk of fire that they see, but there’s also a crisis if you have 56 people homeless in 14 degree weather," particularly with Rhode Island suffering from a lack of affordable housing.

Cliff Wood, director of Providence’s Department of Art, Culture, and Tourism, says the root of the problem is dangerous conditions in the Olneyville building. Fire and electrical inspectors rated hazards there an eight out of a possible 10, and would have felt within their rights to evacuate the structure within an hour of the initial inspection, Wood says, but the ensuing 12 days have given residents more time to gather their gear and make plans. Wood says he is focusing on identifying which residents need relocation and what their specific circumstances are.

Wood and Koch identified the owner of the building as Walter Bronhard of Fall River, Massachusetts. Bronhard could not be immediately reached for comment.

The Olneyville Square music scene, although largely hidden from public view, has supplanted the former Fort Thunder as the bastion of Providence’s creative underground. Residents of the lofts at 244 Oak St./71 Troy St. have relished being part of a vibrant and do-it-yourself alternative to the commercial club scene. As Koch puts it, "I feel like this is my way of life. It’s really important to create a positive community environment out of spaces that otherwise would be unused . . . I consider myself a community activist and consider my life part of that. Choosing to live in a situation like this, the main thing was the potential for creating something out of nothing, but also out of something" — a forgotten industrial building — "that was considered completely useless."

The clampdown on the building, where some artists and musicians are said to have lived for up to six years, was apparently prompted by a complaint to the nuisance task force of Attorney General Patrick Lynch. With Fort Thunder already having fallen to the forces of gentrification, it remains to be seen how the administration of Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline will now balance safety and code concerns with support for the city’s creative underground.