Rau Fastener

Mill Complex

Providence, Rhode Island

Introduction

Summer 2003 The Developer The Architect Reviving a Brownfield Tour the Site

Fall 2004 The Developer The Architect Tour the Site

Summer 2006 The Developer Tour the Site

The Numbers

The Developer

Sharon Conard-Wells is executive director of the West Elmwood Housing Development Corporation.

View of Rau buildings and land slated for housing in subsequent phases of the Rau development.

Our interest in the site began when the Rau complex was still an operating business. We were trying to develop single-family housing for first-time home buyers on several lots abutting the site, but we couldn't attract anyone. Our land was across the street from these unkempt parking lots, which were overgrown and generally unused.

We approached the owner of the property and asked him what he was going to do with the lots, and he said he would donate them to us. But he explained that he was in the middle of some transactions and would get back to us. The next thing I knew he was going out of business.

So the land and the factory just sat there. Residents who lived near the factory came by after the site was vacant for about a year and a half and asked us what West Elmwood was going to do with the property.

Rau used to manufacture snaps, the kind used on clothing such as Lee jeans. The company used to hire people from the neighborhood, so we thought it was a pretty good neighbor.

When they said they were going to donate the land to us after completing their transaction, we were quite excited, because it meant that we would be able to market our nearby land and build more houses on it.

Residents Seek Action
There was one woman who kept saying, "You really have to do something with that site." But I basically told her that we don't do factories; we don't do industrial developments; we're not an economic-development corporation.

But she persisted and finally met some board members (many of them live in the neighborhood) and actually got them interested in the idea that West Elmwood should take on the site.

My board started talking about how we were in the business to do the hard stuff. If it was easy, if it was profitable, someone else would be doing it, they said.

Then we met with people from Rhode Island Housing (the state finance agency) to talk about doing a rental project at Rau, but that proposal was turned down. There was a feeling in the state that you couldn't put housing in that kind of building because people don't live together well in them.

So it became a policy of the board to figure out what to do with that building. Rhode Island Housing had undertaken other projects with lots of units that had not gone well. They took me to see one project in particular that persuaded them that these were not smart things to do.

Neighborhood housing adjacent to the Rau site.

I spent some time looking at that project. We discussed a concept called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED), which promotes strategies to increase livability and reduce the commercial or industrial feel of large buildings. It talks about the logical placement of entryways and lights and other features to make buildings safer and more accessible.

After looking at the design that Rhode Island Housing said was unworkable, I understood why they were concerned. But I still believed we could do something smarter at this site.

I took Tom Deller (the director of planning for the city of Providence) out to the site. At the time, he was working at Rhode Island Housing and had just moved to the city. Because of my earlier conversations, I knew that Rhode Island Housing didn't have an appetite for this type of project, but I wanted to find out if they would be willing to consider what we had in mind.

A Holistic Development
I began to talk about the concept of a holistic development and crime prevention through environmental design. Since I had last spoken to Rhode Island Housing, we had developed Stephen's Apartments — a 32-unit apartment building not far from the Rau site. The project has been operating successfully for the last two years, so there was less resistance to families living together in a large complex. There was also a growing appetite for artists' housing and affordable family housing.

I told Tom why we thought it should be holistic and how we couldn't keep bringing residents into a community without providing services.

This building will be transformed into a day-care center and commercial space in phase two of the Rau development.

After that I had some conversations with residents about day care. I said, "Wouldn't it be great if we could bring in day care?"

Eventually, the media started to write about my concept, and people started to approach me. The director of the John Hope Settlement House approached me and said he'd be interested in expanding his day-care services to the site. I also had several for-profit businesses that were interested in the site for commercial use.

Some weren't ready to deal with the brownfields aspect of it; others thought the ceiling height wasn't high enough. But it was encouraging to know that there were some businesses out there that would consider moving to the neighborhood.

I put together a team that had expertise in development, design, brownfields, legal issues, and all of the other pieces needed to develop the site. Then we began to brainstorm about where things would fit and what the development would look like, and the fire just caught hold.

By mid 2001, we really started saying, "Yes, we could do this. We broke the development of the site into phases. In the first phase, we plan to develop 67 rental, 45 market-rate, and 22 low-income affordable apartments in two large buildings on the site.

In phase two, we plan to convert a two-story, 20,000 square foot building into 65 day-care slots for the John Hope Settlement House and commercial space for a still-unnamed tenant.

For the third phase, we plan to subdivide some of the extra parking lots and several other lots that were available for sale into 5,000-square-foot lots to create 24 affordable units for first-time home buyers. These will be two-family duplexes. The owner will live in one unit and rent out the other.

Across the street from Rau we've acquired a 60,000-square-foot lot the size of a city block that was the former site of a factory that burned. In the final phase of the development, we'll be building 20 one-family, market-rate townhouses on that site.

We actually started funding the project long before we owned it, because the brownfields aspect of the site was such a serious concern. My board needed to determine what level of risk we were talking about and whether or not we could handle it.

The building that is least significant historically was where most of the contaminants were, so we decided to demolish that building, abate the site, and develop it for parking. That building also faces the street, so tearing it down allows us to do some really good landscaping.

View of a building that will be renovated in phase one of the Rau initiative.

The Rau site is also historic. We've submitted a nomination to have it put on the National Historic Register. Before we put our plans together, we also met with the state historic people to make sure that our plan for demolition and restoration met with their guidelines. My architect also did some checking with the federal people because we didn't want to build this whole plan around something that wouldn't be supported when we got the financing.

The whole image of the West End is going to be positively impacted. And by doing some moderate-income homeownership units, we're insuring that the West End does not remain one of the lowest-income neighborhoods in the city.