Bret AncowitzBrown University seems to have finally chosen the future location of its Medical School. Currently shoehorned into its BioMed Building, the University initially decided that despite the 100 million dollar gift from Warren Alpert, our Great Recession made building a new structure adjacent to Rhode Island Hospital impossible and the call was made to renovate one of its recently purchased Jewelry District buildings.
According to a Providence Journal article, that structure is going to be the one at 222 Richmond Street. That would put it fairly close to the future park slated for the 195 land, and nearby as well to what I and some others would like to see as a future “Chestnut Square,” a hypothetical retail and commercial center that could serve as J&W’s Thayer Street…
This location may be a better one for local urbanism, as almost anything new that would have been built on the ocean of asphalt parking that is the Rhode Island Hospital campus would have been all but invisible to the cityscape. Hopefully Brown will renovate the structure and the surrounding neighborhood with an eye towards making it a more vital, 24-hour a day place. Putting the Medical School there automatically will bring hundreds of students and faculty at all hours where there were none before. One can wish that there will be new places nearby for them to eat, shop, dryclean, and
All of the details are in the ProJo article here.
In other Brown news, the new Creative Arts Council (CAC) Building just broke ground adjacent to Angell Street on College Hill. The Providence Business News has coverage here. We discussed renders of the building several months ago in this post.
Jef Nickerson
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