To the Editor:
It’s Time to Start Thinking About Repurposing Providence Place Mall
(This was originally published in GoLocal Prov on 11/10/24)
PHOTO: Will Morgan for GoLocal
The recent court order placing Providence Place Mall into receivership, while shocking to many, was inevitable. Even before COVID, stores were leaving the Mall. In hindsight, there was a mind-boggling miscalculation by the original developers about Providence demographics and what types of upscale stores would be successful at the Mall.
Nordstrom’s, Lord & Taylor’s, and Filene’s—remember them. Not enough Barrington folks came to the Mall to support them. And not enough East Siders to support those stores either. Even a middle of the road department store, like J.C Penney’s left town. Macy’s is probably next. And I don’t know how Boscov’s stays in business at the Providence Place Mall.
So, what happened? COVID changed the local Downtown marketplace, probably permanently. The thousands of Downtown workers, who would go over to the Mall at lunchtime or after work—they’re working at home now. Empty offices are everywhere in Downtown. Office space occupancy in Downtown peaked years ago and is now begging for tenants. Slowly, these empty offices will be converted into residential units, providing the Mall with new nearby shoppers. But this is a long-term proposition.
The deadliest knife in the Mall’s business plan is, of course, the Amazon retail culture that has taken over America. Why get in a car, drive to the Mall, take 10 minutes to find a parking space, and walk hundreds of feet to find the store that has that special item you want? Especially in winter weather. Just open your laptop, shop for a few minutes in the comfort of your kitchen, and have the item delivered to your front door within 3 days. The Amazon consumer model is not going away. Several brick-and-mortar retail stores in the Providence Place Mall will continue to disappear. Maybe the Cheesecake Factory will survive.
It’s time to think about repurposing many of the spaces in Providence Place Mall. Why wait until the Mall is half empty? That’s when the departure of remaining stores will accelerate and the Mall owner will leave town. Providence will end up with 1.4 million square feet of empty space. We will have the distinction of having the largest vacant building in New England.
What other kinds of uses might fit into the Mall, while still keeping retail uses as a core?
Housing
It is feasible to alter many of the Providence Place Mall spaces to accommodate a few hundred apartment or condo units. The demand for housing is huge in Providence, especially for moderate-income levels. Several RI developers would be interested in this type of project. The units would generate badly needed rental revenue for the Mall. The people living in the units will also generate daily traffic for the Mall’s retail spaces.
Repurposing existing retail or existing movie theater space, of course, will be challenging, but not impossible, and it will likely be much less costly for a developer than buying land, installing infrastructure, and starting from scratch.
College Dormitory Spaces
Providence is a college town with four universities and colleges: Brown, Johnson & Wales, Providence College, and RI College. The first three of these schools are within a mile of Providence Place Mall and are served by bus lines to Downtown Providence. Brown, J&W, and PC have a combined undergraduate and graduate school enrollment of 13,000 students.
Each of these three schools have difficulty housing their students, because of land and building cost issues. I estimate that about 4,000-5,000 of these 13,000 students are not living in local college dormitories, rather in neighborhood apartments, and are a prime market for low-cost dormitory suite type housing that could be developed at the Mall in conjunction with the local colleges.
College Classroom Spaces
Classroom space in the Mall makes perfect sense, of course, for many of the Johnson & Wales undergraduate programs in culinary arts and hospitality. Beyond J&W, parts of the Mall space could be repurposed for new innovative program space for our local colleges. The conversion of the former Narragansett Electric/National Grid power station into South Street Landing as a nursing school space is an excellent example of repurposing a challenging space.
The RI voters were just asked and approved $73,000,000 to convert the existing Whipple Hall on the RI College campus into a new Institute for Cybersecurity & Emerging Technologies building. Is it too late to consider locating this Institute at the Mall, instead of at RIC, and save $15-20 million in construction costs?
State and City Archives Spaces
As the 2024 RI Legislature was winding down last June, a proposed bill to place a $50 million bond issue to build a State Archive Center on the 2024 November ballot was not voted on. It was the most recent defeat of several proposals over the last 20 years to centralize the state archives into one space with adequate climate control. State archival material remains spread out over several buildings in inadequate spaces, difficult to access, and in some cases at risk of deteriorating.
The City of Providence is also in need of archival space. Its current archives are jammed into 19th century spaces in City Hall with poor climate control that are right out of the Dickens era. Needless to say, the survival of hundreds of historic documents are at risk in this type of environment.
The Mall could easily have existing spaces redesigned and repurposed into centralized archival spaces that would guarantee the survival of the archival material, make them easy to access by researchers and the public, and potentially be put on exhibit for the public to learn about Rhode Island and City history.
What’s Needed Next: Political Will and a Commitment to Creativity
Receivership may be a blessing for the Mall’s future. There is now a sense of urgency to do something different at the Mall. Something other than retail uses. And soon. And with more folks at the table to plan the Mall’s future, such as state and city officials, the Providence Foundation, and local architects.
The Mall has a lot going for it to become a multi-purpose building in the heart of Providence. The building fabric is in good shape; there is good infrastructure in terms of water, sewer, power, and HVAC; more than 4,000 parking spaces; and there are several hundred thousand square feet of space potentially available for re-purposing.
There’s a lot at stake here for the Mall to survive. The state and the city have a lot to lose if the Mall goes belly up. They have a lot to gain by being a part of the decision-making to make the Mall succeed.
Rhode Island invented the concept of repurposing old buildings. Thanks to the State Historic Preservation Office and local developers willing to take risks, millions of square feet of old extile and manufacturing buildings in the state have been repurposed in the last 50 years into tax-paying successful uses.
And how about Quonset Point? When President Nixon pulled the plug on the Navy at Quonset in 1973, and thousands of jobs disappeared with the Navy, state officials didn’t throw up their hands and simply hope for the best. Instead, state officials made a commitment to repurpose the site into an economic hub for the state. Quonset Point is a rare Rhode Island economic success story. That state commitment has paid big dividends for the state in terms of jobs, innovation, and national prominence.
It’s time for the state and city to roll up their sleeves and form a task force with the Providence Place Mall receivership attorneys and the Mall owners and get to work.
Bob McMahon
