Bars and other establishments have come and gone in the Jewelry District for decades. It’s more likely that the current recession is contributing to closures than anything else. Yes some Eddy Street sidewalks are unpaved where the 1950s highway interchange was inserted into the city’s street grid. The state will be rebuilding or reconnecting streets and sidewalks as a part of the 195 relocation project. The present condition of the Eddy/Dyer corridor in the Jewelry District is an undeveloped industrial zone just as the others were.

The Dynamo House site will be adjacent to a new downtown 5.9-acre waterfront park. In roughly 5 years there will be a downtown streetcar system that will operate on 7½-minute intervals that will be within a block of the site hat should help the traffic issue. The 195 parcels will be sold and begin to be developed. The present vacant quality of the area will dramatically change with these improvements. The Dynamo House project will be a vital southern downtown anchor.

Before the Capital Center Master Plan was developed the foot of the state house had more in common with today’s Jewelry District waterfront. Dynamo House proximity makes it a better candidate to be the heart of a future waterfront district. Whereas Wickenden Street and the Fox Point waterfront is further from the downtown core.

Why not an active waterfront district on both sides of the river?

I’m just not sure that ‘if you build it, they will come’ is true for that particular area, I’ve seen several bars and venues close on the far-end of the Jewelry District in the past few months, there’s not much foot traffic, and the city totally ignores the public works (yes, those sidewalks on Eddy St. are -still- unpaved, the drains are clogged, and nobody does snow removal on the bridge), and traffic is just terrible. Wouldn’t the old Bootleggers/Shooters/India Point location make more sense for an attraction? With easy access to the highway, green space, a dock that can service boats taller than a few feet, and Wickenden St., it seems a better bet.

I also don’t think a Brown building is the best use for this location. What SBE&R seemed to have planned for Dynamo House (and what I think would be a very good use) is along the lines of what they did at the Baltimore waterfront.

Photo (cc) DumbYellowDog

While there could be a mixed-use component to having Brown in the Dynamo House, maximizing it’s dining, entertainment, museum, hotel… uses would maximize the number of people coming to the waterfront. In the photo above, you can see the Baltimore example is much like Providence. With a power station, a smaller building, rather like the Davol Square complex, and a new building, which we could see built on the parking lot at Davol Square.

Building out the Dynamo House and Davol Square sites provides the opportunity for a massive amount of square footage so there would be room for Brown to have offices in there and still maximize the public attraction potential, but I simply don’t see Brown being interested in the Dynamo House itself.

The potential here for Providence to build a world class waterfront entertainment attraction is amazing. It would be in company with places like the Baltimore waterfront, South Street Seaport, and Ghirardelli Square. And it would not require the relocation of any working industry (unlike other waterfront areas in the city). When visitors came to Providence and asked where our waterfront is, we’d finally have answer (and the answer would not be, “Newport”). This potential makes it all the more painful to see this project languishing (again).