The mayor of a Northeast city of comparable size and postindustrial decline to Yonkers visited last week to share lessons learned from his city”™s waterfront redevelopment effort and economic renaissance.
“It”™s really important to think big,” David N. Cincilline, mayor of Providence, the Rhode Island capital, told a Yonkers Business Week audience. “It really does require big thinking and the imagination that this can be done.”
A partnership of the public and private sectors “is really important for any project of this magnitude,” he said. “It requires real investment and buy-in from the private sector.” In Providence, the partnership forged by the city and state included business, philanthropists, nonprofit foundations and the federal government, he said.
Executing on big thinking, “You have to do some things early in the project that really make it believable ”¦ and give people confidence that this vision really can be accomplished,” the mayor said.
As in Yonkers, the resurgence of downtown Providence focused on waterfront redevelopment and “daylighting” for public use a stretch of river that had been long buried under pavement. The reclamation project involved moving two rivers and railroad tracks to open up the city”™s center.
Cincilline said Providence, slightly smaller than Yonkers with a population of 180,000, has benefited from more than $3 billion in investment sparked by water-oriented redevelopment in the city”™s new Capital Center on the Providence River. It is the second-largest and fastest-growing city in New England
WaterFire, an art installation of 100 burning braziers on that river, “has created this incredible experience that people come into downtown just to walk around,” he told his Yonkers audience. “Literally millions of people come into the center of the city with no other real purpose than just to wander around the city.” About 70 percent of visitors to the WaterFire spectacle are visiting Providence for the first time, “so it”™s a great vehicle for introducing people to the city.”
“It has really revived the soul and the heart of the city,” Cicilline said. “The Providence River was 10 years ago totally inactive. Now it”™s filled with recreational activity.”
In Yonkers, the $1.6 billion redevelopment plan proposed by Struever Fidelco Cappelli L.L.C. (SFC), the city”™s master developer, includes uncovering two stretches of the Saw Mill River at Larkin Plaza and in the Chicken Island area, site of the development partners”™ proposed mixed-use River Park Center. Introducing Cicilline and other panelists at the Business Week event, SFC project manager Peter G. Klein envisioned “140,000 people” enjoying a riverside public park where “140 cars” now are parked on Larkin Plaza.
The Larkin Plaza project will be publicly funded. Klein said SFC”™s cost to uncover the river at Chicken Island and build a River Park Center Riverwalk was estimated at $42 million. He said that work “will be an integral part of our first phase” of construction that SFC hopes to begin late this year.
The daylighting project last week surfaced in the city”™s public arena after a newly formed local development corporation, composed chiefly of elected and appointed city officials, applied to the state for a $24 million grant authorized two years ago for the Saw Mill River project. The New Main Street Development Corp. proposed to use the funds to acquire 11 properties needed to make way for SFC”™s Riverwalk. SFC holds purchase options on several of the properties.
That led Yonkers City Councilman John Murtagh last week to question why the city would act as “middleman” for the developer in acquiring needed properties from private owners.
Councilwoman Patricia McDow, who was appointed to the New Main Street Development Corporation board, said she opposed the board”™s application to the state because it could allow the city to acquire private properties through eminent domain.
A few council members said they thought the $24 million grant was to be used for the city”™s share of daylighting construction costs when announced two years ago. They wondered how the revenue-strapped city will come up with funding for the project. The council said it would meet with officials of Mayor Philip Amicone”™s administration to seek answers.
Former Gov. George E. Pataki two years ago announced an additional $10 million in funding for the daylighting project. Amicone”™s City Hall spokesman David Simpson last week said that money from the Empire State Development Corp. is planned for the Larkin Plaza project.
Simpson said the new development corporation will not retain ownership of the properties once the daylighting project is complete, but instead dissolve itself after transferring the properties to either the city or another entity.
“We”™ve used LDCs (local development corporations) on a number of different projects,” he said. “They”™re commonly used to protect the city and protect the taxpayers in case something goes awry” with a project.
As for who will own Riverwalk, a public space within the private River Park Center development, “It”™s still being worked out with the development team over who”™s going to own those public spaces, how they”™re going to be maintained,” Simpson said.
The Providence mayor, who was given a Hudson River tour on the year-old ferry line serving Yonkers, said Yonkers had one major element and opportunity that his city lacked in its rebirth.
“You have this incredible waterway, this really serious river,” Cicilline said of the Hudson. “To the extent that you connect with that, you make a really powerful statement.”
