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Alice Building - NOTES!!!

The Alice Building was built in 1898 by Joseph Banigan, founder of the Woonsocket Rubber Company, and according to Woodward and Sanderson's Providence: A Citywide Survey of Historic Resources, the building was named after his daughter, Alice.

Cornish Associates, as owner of this seven-story, classical revival building located on the southeast corner of the intersection of Westminster and Union Streets, has restored and rehabilitated the building into 5,000 s.f. of first floor retail space and 36 residential units on the upper floors. The residential units, ranging from 820 to 1,560 square feet, are being marketed as artists' live/work spaces.

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Residential

Smith Building [profile by Cornish Associates]
The Smith Building is an historic building located directly behind City Hall in Downcity Providence. Cornish, joint-venturing with Keen Development Corporation of Cambridge, MA, rehabilitated the building and converted it into 36 loft-style apartments ranging from 600 to over 1000 square feet and two first-floor retail spaces, creating the first of several sustainable housing components in the Downcity area. This initial boost in housing will be the catalyst for a Downcity neighborhood that will provide housing, retail and entertainment for its residents. 

Alice Building [profile by Cornish Associates]
The Alice Building was built in 1898 by Joseph Banigan, founder of the Woonsocket Rubber Company, and according to Woodward and Sanderson's Providence:  A Citywide Survey of Historic Resources, the building was named after his daughter, Alice.  Cornish Associates, as owner of this 7-story, classical revival building located on the southeast corner of the intersection of Westminster and Union Streets, plans to restore and rehabilitate the building into 5,000 s.f. of first floor retail space and 36 residential units on the upper floors.  It is anticipated that many of the residential units, ranging from 820 to 1,560 square feet, will be used as artists' live/work spaces.  Construction is projected to begin in September 2000 with occupancy planned for September 2001. 

Peerless [profile by Cornish Associates]
The Peerless Building, a 7-story, 209,000 square foot historic building located at 239 Westminster Street will be renovated into first-floor retail space, approximately 90,000 s.f. of office space and 50+ large residential lofts on the upper floors. Our renovations include preserving the exterior of the building and upgrading the building systems and infrastructure to support technology-based businesses.  Construction is expected to begin in the winter of 2000 and occupancy is planned for the winter of 2001.

O'Gorman-Burgess Block

Martha L. Werenfels, AIA, Principal, Durkee & Brown, Architects, 300 West Exchange Street, Providence, Rhode Island, 02903, Tel 401.831.1240, Fax 401.331.1945, Email mwerenfels@durkeebrown.com, Web http://www.durkeebrown.com/

Cliff Wood, Downcity Coordinator, Cornish Associates, LP, 15 Westminster Street, Suite 731, Providence, Rhode Island 02903 Tel 401.421.0254 Fax 401.421.6866 Email cliff_wood@cornishlp.com, Web http://www.cornishlp.com/

MW: Trust presentation on new design in historic context - infill; affordable housing; multi-family

Arnold "Buff" Chace and Douglas Storrs, president-CEO and vice president, respectively, of Cornish Associates, are hoping that the redevelopment of buildings like the Alice revives the center city as a place where artists, students and professionals will live, spawning a new neighborhood in the new millennium.

The Alice was built over a century ago by rubber magnate Joseph Banigan who named it after his daughter. Designed in 1898 by Martin & Hall, the Alice was one of the earliest enclosed shopping malls, considered the first "vertical" shopping mall with seven floors of retail space. Banigan is also responsible for Providence's first "skyscraper" the 10-story Banigan Building which he built in 1896. Now known as the Amica Building, it's located at 10 Weybosset St. in the city's financial district.

The Alice is listed on the National Register of Historic Buildings. The Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission's booklet, "Providence, A Citywide Survey of Historic Resources," describes the Alice as a "stone-trimmed building in the American Renaissance mode ornamented with a variety of classically derived motifs .. .

The concept of a large building containing small shops had been realized in the Arcade of 1828, but the formula was not reused on a large scale again until the completion of this building.''
In its heyday, the Alice housed dozens of stores including milliners, corset shops and jewelry shops. It was also home to several dentists, chiropodists and optical and hearing-aid shops.

Things changed in the late 1960s with the development of suburban shopping malls Midland Mall (now Rhode Island Mall) in 1967 and Warwick Mall soon after. As retail moved out of downtown and into the suburbs, the Alice's occupancy changed from all retail to retail on the ground floor only and offices above. By 1999, most of the building was vacant, with only four tenants remaining.

The goal of Cornish's revitalization project is to create 200 apartments in the two city blocks bounded by Fulton, Union, Middle and Eddy Streets.

In 1999, Cornish Associates reopened the Smith Building, at 57-59 Eddy St., as a residential building. The Smith Building which is located behind City Hall and used to house Luke's, a Chinese restaurant has 36 units on the upper floors, and commercial space on the street level. A third of the tenants of the Smith Building (which now has the address of 1 Fulton St.) are artists.

Three years ago, Cornish Associates purchased the Alice.
Their original plan was to set aside eight units as artists' lofts with rents of only $375 a month, and four townhouse units built in a penthouse atop the seven-story structure for an average rent of $2,500 a month.

Chase told reporters in February 2000 that, ''We're trying to create a building that can have an eclectic mix of residents, in terms of their tastes and their income levels, and everything else.''
With help from the city and the Rhode Island Housing and Mortgage Financing Corporation (RIHMFC), Cornish Associates spent $8.4 million building apartments and revitalizing what has been a mostly vacant building for several decades. They hired architects Durkee, Brown, Viveiros & Werenfels of Providence to do the redesign.
Rents start at $850
As the project developed, plans changed. The final project was a 37-unit apartment building with monthly rents ranging from $850 to $2,150. The largest unit is a penthouse that is being test marketed as a double unit, but can be subdivided later.

Currently 14 apartments are rented, and Cornish is negotiating with a cafe to rent space on the ground floor.
Next spring, the company plans to open three more downtown buildings for occupancy, located just east of the Alice. Four units are planned in the Burgess Building, five in the O'Gorman Building and nine in the Lerner Building (three of which are two-level townhouses). The O'Gorman Building, at the corner of Westminster and Eddy Streets, was originally built in 1925 as an office building with some first-floor shops. The Burgess Building, built in 1870, housed Bryant & Stratton College, now known as Bryant College.
In the year 2004, 91 apartments are slated to open in the Peerless Building across the street at 239 Westminster. (Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel and the Met Cafe still occupy space there.)
A critical mass
''When you produce approximately 200 units in downtown, that becomes enough of a critical mass to escalate the demand for a small grocery store, to support the CVS, the restaurants,'' says Storrs, a real-estate planner who grew up in New Hampshire and moved to Rhode Island 16 years ago. ''It becomes enough of a mass to create a neighborhood.''

Each floor of the newly renovated building is different.
The storefronts in the third-floor hallway have been restored to look like a Tudor village. Exteriors have stucco trim and slate roofing over the old peaked doorways. The curved multipane windows are painted in a darker shade, maintaining privacy but keeping the streetfront look.
Two other floors have similar, but less ornate storefronts. Hallways are carpeted, and walls have been painted bright greens and yellows.
The apartments have a wide range of layouts. Some are true lofts with open floor plans and only the closets and bathrooms enclosed, while others have separate bedrooms, kitchens and walk-up mezzanines that can be used as bedroom or office space. Living space ranges from a modest 742 square feet to a spacious 2,023 square feet.
Many of the lofts have 19-foot ceilings, and windows that are close to 7 feet high and 5 feet wide. These also have deep, stone windowsills. Where the original granite was missing or in poor condition, the architects substituted wood, making a deliberate distinction between old and new. They made the same distinction in the flooring, laying any new floorboards in a contrasting pattern to the old.

Each unit has a fully equipped kitchen, and a washer and dryer. All have hardwood floors. Each unit has multiple phone lines connecting to downtown's dedicated fiber optic loop.

While shopping for clothing and accessories is a short walk away, there has not been a grocery store in the heart of the city since the Food Basket closed in 1994, though Barbara Dacey of Residential Properties, who is marketing the Alice, is quick to point out that East Side Marketplace will deliver.

Parking is a big issue. Although there is a loading zone for tenants to drop off large items and groceries, residents are responsible for finding their own parking spaces. Cornish Associates provides a list of downtown parking garages and their rates. Twenty-four-hour fees range from $110 to $265 a month.

But Cianci said he expects his legacy to hinge on the city's neighborhoods -- where the city has invested over $500 million in the past decade -- as much as on downtown.
"The neighborhoods [are] what I'm proudest of," he said. "Most of our money has been invested in the neighborhoods."

offering 75,000 to 150.000 square feet of space,

Sources and Resources

The Brookings Institution, Center on Urban and Metropolitan Polic

Downtown Providence 1970: A demonstration of citizen participation in comprehensive planning, May 1961

Downcity Providence: Master plan and implementation plan, developed as Plan 1A of the Area Plan Series of Providence 2000: The Comprehensive Plan by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Palter-Zyberk, Town Planners; and 1B of the Area Plan Series of Providence 2000: The Comprehensive Plan the Downcity Task Force and the Department of Planning and Development, January 1, 1994

Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21),
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/tea21/

Urban Development in Downtown Providence, Political Science 303 (Urban Politics), Prof. Tony Affigne, Providence College, Fall 1997
http://www.providence.edu/polisci/projects/redevelopment/
http://www.brook.edu/dybdocroot/es/urban/urban.htm

Gunther-Rosenberg, Avis. "New beauty on the block,: The Providence Journal-Bulletin, April 14, 2002, page H-01