The new fight for Providence’s mills (continued)

WHILE SOME PEOPLE see the mill conversions as a good sign – bringing investment to economically depressed areas — the number of developments and the pace of residential conversion is of great concern to others. With each new development that turns mills into housing, it becomes increasingly harder for artists, craftspeople, and small businesses to stay in these spaces.

Chris Freed, for example, has run his custom woodworking business out of the fourth floor of the Procaccianti Building at 25 Eagle St. for 16 years, and rents 3200 square feet for about $550 a month. He says the new building owners approached him and mentioned the idea of helping tenants to buy another building, but he doesn’t think such a plan would work because "most of these guys are pretty independent." Freed says he depends on below-market rent to keep his business in the city, and if he can’t find comparable prices, he probably won’t stay in town.

In a statement, Artiste Lofts says it is "inviting the current industrial tenants, many of whom are woodworkers, to approach the developer with a group cooperative proposal to locate an alternative mill site for their businesses, which the developer would consider improving for their use."

For woodworkers like Colgate Searle, who has a shop in the Leach Building, across from the Procaccianti, the threat of displacement and the difficulty in finding affordable space are just the first of many challenges facing small manufacturers in the US, who have to compete with foreign businesses and cheap foreign labor.

"Everything is stacked against you," says Searle. "If people are successful, it’s because they’ve found a niche or have gotten lucky."

Although the City of Providence can do little to address international trade issues or concerns about foreign labor, concern about the displacement of small businesses has spurred some people to advocate for changes in city’s the Industrial and Commercial Buildings District.

Laura Mullen, the artists’ sustainable housing coordinator for the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts, was involved in the planning that ultimately led to the ICDB. She says the thinking of many people has gone through an evolution over the last two years. "The goal of the legislation was really to protect the buildings," Mullen says. "The people that worked to get the legislation passed felt that that was a victory enough, and if the uses evolved over time, the uses evolved over time." Now, though, she says, the legislation is seen as having created financial incentives that encourage the displacement of artists and small businesses. "I think we all look at architectural preservation and we’re all very happy with it," Mullen says. "But I don’t think anyone really anticipated that gentrification would follow hand in hand, as swiftly and clearly as it did."

Mullen says it’s sometimes hard to see the communities that still exist within Providence’s mill buildings, if observers don’t know what to look for. "Those people that are supportive of the developments don’t necessarily identify the value that’s already in the neighborhood," she says. "They might look at the neighborhood and see crumbling buildings, but they don’t realize that there’s a community fabric that is dependent on the physical structures. It’s kind of invisible to people unless they’re in that neighborhood every day."

The same kind of concerns led Erik Bright, a partner in the Monohasset Mill project, which converted a mill building across from Eagle Square into live-work condominiums for artists, to help establish the Partnership for Creative Industrial Space (PCIS). The group’s mission is to "preserve and provide affordable and sustainable commercial space" in the Industrial and Commercial Buildings District. Bright says the recent survey by Lisa Carnevale, PCIS’ executive director, which revealed a large number of jobs in local mills, should give the city "an idea of the kind of displacement that can happen if they don’t start actively pursuing a zoning policy for commercial and industrial space."

Using its survey results as ammunition, PCIS is initiating a series of policy recommendations intended to make it easier to preserve industrial space for artists, craftspeople, and small businesses. These suggestions include extending the Downcity tax-free zone to the ICBD, providing a 50 percent tax break on sales and use tax to businesses located in ICBD buildings redeveloped for commercial use, linking tax abatement to the extent of commercial development, and repealing the automatic live-work variance on a select number of ICBD buildings. "When we originally passed the live-work variance it was exactly that," Bright adds. "It wasn’t a variance for residential, it was a variance for live-work, and that’s what that means — live-work, a combination of residential and commercial space. We haven’t really seen any of that kind of development." Bright contends that by picking between five and 10 buildings to remain commercial in select neighborhoods, the city can ensure that industrial practices will continue in some mills.

WHETHER OR NOT PCIS’s recommendations will turn into actual policy remains to be seen. Clark Schoettle is the director of the Revolving Fund of the Providence Preservation Society, PCIS’s fiscal agent on a Rhode Island Foundation grant that funded the initial survey. Schoettle has reservations about some of PCIS’s policy proposals. Rather than selectively repealing the automatic live-work variance, which he says could unfairly penalize individual property owners, Schoettle argues it might be better to re-examine the definition of live-work, so that "to occupy a live-work space you have to pass some qualifications that you’re actually working in that space as well as living there. So you can’t just have residential spaces."

Schoettle also questions whether changes in the mill preservation legislation and tax incentive structure are warranted at all. "There may be four or five high-profile projects that are converting mills into housing, maybe 10," he says. "So that’s 10 complexes out of 250 that are being converted to housing. Is that a crisis? I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s a crisis or just a blip in the scheme of things." Schoettle adds that he is looking forward to reading the completed PCIS survey to better inform his opinions.

Still, it’s noteworthy that city planning director Deller, noting how about 16 percent of Providence is zoned for industrial use, supports the PCIS concept of earmarking some mill buildings for industrial use. "As you start converting that industrial land into housing," Deller says, "if it’s not live-work housing, if it’s not job space, then you start losing. So we’ve got to keep some of that land area, so we can have a place to have jobs."

As part of his department’s revamping of zoning policy, and the city’s possible overhaul of its tax structure, Deller is also advocating for the restructuring of the tax abatement program for the Industrial and Commercial Buildings District. It would be better, he says, to set up the tax abatement as a tiered system linked to the historic importance of individual buildings. Under this concept, all "Tier 1" buildings would automatically receive tax abatement; "Tier 2" buildings would be eligible, but would still have to apply; and "Tier 3" buildings would not be eligible to receive tax abatement.

This dialogue comes as the city council and General Assembly are rethinking tax incentives for mill redevelopment. The Providence Journal reported in June that state legislators tried to impose a moratorium on state historic tax credits, but withdrew the proposal after protest from developers, preservationists, and officials from different cities. In Providence, City Councilman David Segal has been part of efforts to draft amendments to the tax stabilization ordinance, which would impose provisions for affordable housing, responsible contracting, and women and minority contracting (these issues became of particular concern last year around the Rising Sun development). Segal says "development isn’t just bricks and mortar," and that issues of community development need to be taken into account more seriously.

Deller agrees with this assertion, in that he believes, "There are certain policies we want to put out there. You preserve the building, you get a tax stabilization. You do environmental cleanup, you get a tax stabilization. You create affordable housing, you get a tax stabilization. You get jobs, you get a tax stabilization. I think we want to use tax stabilization to encourage certain policies. So it’s immaterial to us who does it. What’s important is the policy issues we’re addressing."

Where things go from here remains far from certain. If anything, the ongoing squeeze on mill buildings and their occupants suggests that without vigilance and government intervention, the marketplace will continue to rule. Whether this is in the best interests of the city — and whether small woodworking shops can receive as much de facto protection as generic businesses – is another question. As Laura Mullen puts it, "It’s uncharted territory whether we can make a set of policies that preserves community and people."

Robin Amer can be reached at robinamer@riseup.net.