Op-Ed: Providence Has a Plan

rovidence is completing its 10-year Comprehensive Plan, a tool to guide and accommodate the next decade of growth, which needs to be approved by the City Plan Commission, Providence City Council, and Rhode Island Division of Statewide Planning. The plan will address issues of housing, sustainable growth, adaptation to climate change issues, how our transportation system will meet the needs of our growing city, and preserving all of the assets and attributes that will continue to make Providence great over the next decade.

Public input was high and some advocates achieved their goals while others did not. We hope that changes can be made not just to correct oversights, but to improve the city if opportunities arise. We think that this point is critically important as it would be hard to argue that the city’s current “state-operated” transportation system is not an improvement from the trolleys that ran on time, were electric, and efficiently covered the city!

The 2014 plan had targeted North Main Street and virtually nothing was developed; it is again a priority in the 2024 plan. “We have to live with the landowners and their goals,” explains Bob Azar, Director of the Department of Planning for the last two Comprehensive Plans. He does point to the 18 new units on Eighth Street off North Main as a great start.

Looking back on the 2014 plan, Federal Hill, the West End, Fox Point, downtown and the 195 District delivered the most on housing, with projects already in progress that will continue. The city also achieved a rate of 14-15 percent of deeded affordable housing, well above the state-mandated 10 percent. “The hope is to incentivize more affordable housing through a number of programs to assist developers, including greater density,” adds Azar.

Central to the plan is housing. The plan calls for increasing the housing supply by reclassifying certain residential zones to allow for higher density development. Areas currently zoned as R-2, which permit only single-family homes and duplexes, will be up-zoned to R-3, allowing for single, two- and three-family homes, and small apartment buildings through a special use permit. Commercial properties, currently zoned C-1 will be reclassified to C-2, expanding current commercial zones, allowing for larger development.

Another major change is that single-family zones in College Hill and on Blackstone Boulevard will now be mandated, via state law, to accommodate more density through state-mandated additional dwelling units (ADU). Originally conceived for grandparents, in-laws, and maybe an ex-spouse or a kid who won’t leave, their use is no longer restricted. This also means that all of the single family- or multi-families that have an “illegal extra apartment” would now become “legal” as long as they are up to code.

The neighborhood associations have continued to grow in membership and advocacy and while they had input, they still have some concerns… and they aren’t going anywhere. Over 50 residents appeared at the last comprehensive board planning meeting trying to soften the edges of the proposed one-size-fits-all approach. Nina Markov, president of the College Hill Neighborhood Association, articulated a general complaint: “We believe in smart and appropriate development and ‘gentle gentrification’ but have concerns over the unintended effects of the draft and believe we need stronger guardrails and safeguards.”

Among her other concerns are that there is nothing protecting historic buildings from being torn down to be replaced by poorly designed, over-scaled and expensive alternatives that do not fit the neighborhood fabric. These concerns extend beyond the East Side, much of which is protected by being designated as Historic Districts. Her suggestion, echoed by several other petitioners, is that the city should expand protection to houses on the National Registry of Historic Houses all over the city.

Markov’s letter goes on to suggest that we also need more rigorous design standards. Residents across the city are all about preserving historic properties, especially ones of historic significance to their individual neighborhoods. “The obvious need to densify our housing and protect our quality of life are objectives that need not and should not be pitted against each other in our city,” she says.

There will be “players” who will figure out a way to take advantage of some aspect of the plan and we hope that they are checked. As long as there is some fluidity and adaptability and controls in place, we should be able to work with it.