CITYWATCH Planned luxury condos tower marks a new age downtown BY IAN DONNIS

We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

Plans for a new 32-story luxury condo tower at 110 Westminster St., unveiled during a February 24 news conference at City Hall, serve notice of the dawn of a new kind of downtown Providence. While the residential units being developed further up on the same street by Arnold "Buff" Chace won’t be mistaken for affordable housing, the envisioned condo tower (with units to sell for between $500,000 and $2.5 million) speaks to the developers’ confidence that well-heeled cosmopolitans are ready to sink some mighty big bucks in town.

Mayor David N. Cicilline hailed the news "as a very exciting day," asserting, "It’s the first spark of a development boom that is transforming downtown Providence into one of the Northeast’s premier centers for living, working, and visiting." With the cash-poor city facing a serious need for increased tax revenue, the $90 million development by Granoff Associates LLC of Providence and BlueChip Properties LLC of Boston — which is being done without a public subsidy — represents an important source of investment.

Not coincidentally, Cicilline cited the project’s announcement as an affirmation of the approach he has brought to city government since succeeding Buddy Cianci, now doing time at a federal prison in New Jersey for racketeering conspiracy, in January 2002. "We really have been successful in changing the way that city government works and have made it more transparent, and more accountable and more responsive, and this has been paying off," the mayor said. "I refer to this as ‘the trust dividend.’ This is another example of that, helping to create a better environment for investment and attracting companies and developers from both inside and outside Rhode Island."

Indeed, with the Cranston-based Procaccianti Group slated to build a 200-room hotel tower as part of its acquisition of the state-owned Westin, and touting plans for additional projects, including a 27-story shopping/residential tower, Cicilline has reason to cite a surging amount of investment in Providence. The crowd of city officials and downtown boosters on hand for his news conference, including Chace, Providence Journal publisher Howard G. Sutton, and Laurie White, the new head of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce, relished the news. Even the neighborhood-based critics who have faulted City Hall for what they call a flawed approach to planning and development (see "Boiling point," News, October 8, 2004) could find satisfaction in how the 110 Westminster St. development, the first new downtown construction in 20 years, will increase residential density in a place where doing so makes perfect sense. In a state with a serious housing crisis, it’s no small accomplishment to double — as Cicilline said is the case — the amount of housing production from fiscal 2003 to fiscal 2004.

One can only hope that all this adds up to the kind of more vibrant and interesting downtown that city officials have been targeting since the early ’90s.

Still, considering the increasingly elite cost of downtown real estate, it’s hard not to wonder whether the neighborhood will become a more sterile province of the well to do where rock ’n’ roll — which helped to sustain downtown Providence through its lean years — is unwelcome. In one sign of a changing climate, Granoff Associates, which is involved in managing the Arcade, already tightened restrictions on access to public restrooms there before announcing its new nearby development (see "Is a more restrictive Arcade good for downtown?," News, This just in, February 18).

About the only city officials who seem to be actively discussing the related concerns are City Councilors David Segal and Miguel Luna, who, in a recent ProJo op-ed, cited the need for an inclusionary zoning ordinance, enforcement of a local hiring ordinance, and requiring "responsible contracting" to ensure that development benefits a broader spectrum of city residents. Such concepts face an uphill battle, though — not in small part since Cicilline, who enjoyed a liberal profile as a state representative, has moved to the political center since becoming mayor.