All of Downtown is in a protected National Historic District. Should buildings like the Fogarty be protected?
I am not so concerned about the replacement of buildings that do not give a sense of community, or address the street, or provide what I think is a positive direction for urban development. The Fogarty Building has a raised profile that separates it from traffic on the street level. If a new building could address the issues of scale, texture, and how it responds to the buildings around it, then I think it would be appropriate to get rid of.
In the proposal, there are five floors that would be a parking garage above the area scheduled for retail. For developers of parking garages, there is not much maintenance required for the lots. There are electric bills, but there are no heating bills, and the servicing is minimal. So parking lots are initially a slight expense but the rest is constant income.
Generally we consider the life of a building to span thirty-five years, at minimum, before they need improvements or renovations to heating, cooling, mechanical or technical systems. We as planners have to think beyond the initial use or income of a building by considering its usability after thirty-five years. We have buildings that are two and three hundred years old, so we are familiar with the cycles of renovation as well as adaptability of reuse.
What do you think about the replacement buildings?
We have a responsibility to consider not only traffic, transportation, and pedestrians, but also energy and sustainability. The reality is that the developers could make money if they put up solar panels on the southeast side of the building. They could produce electricity that would give them additional income. Granted, they would have to pay a little more initially – but it would pay for itself, and more, in short order. Whether this developer does it or not, someone will eventually begin the trend of capturing solar energy in the development process.
What do you mean that solar energy would “produce income”?
The power companies are always looking for energy. If you put up solar panels and produce electricity you can send it back to the power company, which meters how much energy they receive – and instead of you paying the power company, they pay you. Narragansett Electric buys their energy from other locations – wherever is the cheapest. But there is legislation that says that a certain percentage of power needs to be bought from renewable sources, such as solar or wind energy.
Have you looked at any of the future plans of sustainable energy sources being used in Providence?
There is no comprehensive plan that really begins to address this, whether in Providence or Rhode Island or in New England. The best examples of renewable energy come from England or Sweden. There, they have taken the initiative to plan for renewable energy, not only in urban centers but also in rural areas. For example, in Europe there are solar panels along the highways.
This brings us to the comments you said during the DRC meeting in November. The Providence Journal depicted you as “object[ing] to plans to demolish the Fogarty Building on Fountain Street.” But you were actually issuing a statement about the construction of parking garages, indicating that urban centers “would be facing very real problems in only a few years” and that “building more parking garages would not be a way to address those problems.” Can you talk about that?
There are two primary issues: The easier we make it for people to park their cars Downtown, the more traffic we are going to generate on the highways. North or South on Highway 95, either towards Boston or away from it, the traffic is astronomical. The only way, it seems, to improve the situation is to make the highways bigger. Likewise, the more accommodations we make, the more oil or gas we are going to need. As a planning strategy for the city, we should not be encouraging these kinds of projects. Let’s find another way to provide access to the city. This is happening in a lot of large cities. People will always want to come into the city centers – but with an alternative they would not have to bring their cars.
We have to plan; obviously it is not going to happen overnight. But if in ten years from now we finally get to the point where public transportation systems become viable, what is going to happen with all these parking garages when they are no longer needed?
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Four Perspectives on Downtown Development
Old Buildings Meet New Conversation
