Providence warms to ‘micro-lofts’
If “small is beautiful,” as economist E.F. Schumacher asserted in his influential 1973 book, the 48 new apartments in the Providence Arcade are beautiful in the extreme: Most of them are smaller than 340 square feet. Nineteen of them contain only 225 square feet.
Forget the supposed American preference for “living large.” In the aftermath of the 2008 world financial crisis, developers have begun experimenting with downsized living units, sometimes called “micro-lofts.” These pared-down apartments appear, on the whole, to be a positive trend—making new use of vacant old buildings and bringing new residents to urban centers.
Providence is one of the movement’s pioneers. Why? Partly because the Rhode Island capital contains a substantial cohort of college students and recent graduates—some of whom would like to live in the intimate, well-preserved downtown if they could afford it. Providence has a number of underused old buildings like the Arcade that appear suitable for conversion.
The Arcade, the nation’s oldest indoor shopping mall, is a columned Greek Revival commercial structure built in 1828. I couldn’t have imagined people living in it back in 1980, the year I first strolled its concourse. At that time, the through-block building, with a sober temple-front on each end, had just undergone a major renovation and had been filled with a lively collection of boutiques, food purveyors, service businesses, and offices. With a three-story atrium as its spine, the Arcade provided a handsome pedestrian passage between Westminster and Weybosset Streets, in Providence’s diminutive financial district.
The arcade from the street. Courtesy of Northeast Collaborative Architects
Unfortunately, the mix of tenants that arrived in the 1980s didn’t thrive as decades passed. “Walkup second- and third-floor retail in Providence is not economically viable,” says the building’s owner, Evan Granoff. The atrium, though visually appealing, has the disadvantage of occupying much of the building’s space yet not producing needed rental income. “The building has a 20,500 square foot footprint and three stories but only 29,000 square feet of rentable space,” Granoff points out.
When office vacancies rose in the financial district in recent years, the Arcade’s business suffered, so in 2008, Granoff’s company, 130 Westminster Street Associates, emptied the building. Granoff decided the best hope for its future lay in turning the National Historic Landmark into a mixed-use structure that would cater to young urbanites on tight budgets. The crucial element in the $7 million undertaking was conversion of the upper two floors into mini-housing units. The apartments—for which there’s a long waiting list—are to be occupied beginning this summer. Rents will start at $550 a month.
An expanding market niche
At the Traditional Building Conference in Norwalk, Connecticut, this spring, J. Michael Abbott, a partner in Northeast Collaborative Architects, which has offices in Providence, Newport, Rhode Island, and Middletown, Connecticut, noted that micro-units are proliferating in North America and around the world. “This is the future,” he told conference-goers. “Everyone is downsizing.”
In Abbott ‘s view, tiny apartments are a method to “bring back affordability. Students, service workers, young people could live in the city.”
Steve Durkee, director of development at Cornish Associates, which has been creating apartments in downtown Providence’s old buildings since the early 1990s, agrees. Cornish owns 196 apartments in downtown Providence, and Durkee says they’re 100 percent occupied. But, he points out, they “have a much higher price point” than many people can pay. With micro-units, he says, “you can get younger people who want to live downtown and can’t pay $1,800 a month.”
Durkee believes micro-lofts will diversify the housing stock and bring new activity into the financial district, which, after the recent emptying out of the 26-story Bank of America building, had become “dead as a doornail.”
James Bennett, the City’s economic development director, says the Arcade’s apartments “are set up uniquely for the live-work-play lifestyle” that’s becoming popular in pedestrian-scale cities. He anticipates that micro lofts will be fitted into other historic downtown buildings once the Arcade is occupied. There’s talk of installing mini units in part of the Bank of America tower (known locally as the Superman building, because it resembles the Daily Planet building where Clark Kent worked).
“We have a strong educational infrastructure in Providence”—40,000 to 45,000 students in colleges and universities, Granoff says. “If we could create an attractive place for them to live affordably, they could stay and start a business.”
The surprise, so far, is that the people putting their names on the waiting list are not all twenty-somethings. “About a third are students,” Abbott said. Roughly another third are young people embarking on their careers; in many cases they’re burdened by college debt, yet eager to have an apartment of their own—without a roommate. But there are also other kinds of renters, such as people who want a pied-a-terre in Providence, and companies that want to put their visitors in an apartment rather than a hotel room.
Low rents and sociable spaces
As designed by Northeast Collaborative Architects, 19 units are studios of about 225 square feet. Another 27 units are one-bedroom units—predominantly 300 to 340 square feet, though a few are larger. Also offered are a two-bedroom unit of 900 square feet and a three-bedroom unit of 875 square feet.
The living area of one of the Arcade micro-lots, above, and a floor plan, below
Apartment configurations were shaped by massive, load-bearing masonry walls that would have been difficult to alter. Rather than move walls, the decision was made to let the apartments’ dimensions conform to the building’s fundamentally “very cell-like” structure, Abbott explained.
For an architect, Abbott said, the process is like designing a yacht. With space extremely tight, almost everything is built in. A typical unit has a built-in sofa, built-in lighting, and a 50-inch TV attached to the wall. Bathrooms measure approximately 5 by 5 feet, including a shower.
Bedrooms are generally seven feet wide, with built-in drawers underneath the bed. For an overnight guest, there’s a Murphy bed. Kitchens contain a three-quarter-size refrigerator, a sink, a microwave oven, and an 18-inch-wide dishwasher (to eliminate the clutter of dirty dishes). There is no stove.
Presumably occupants will not do much cooking. “We opted for ‘rooming-house’ zoning status,” not an apartment-house classification, Abbott explained. Rooming-house status allows rooms with small dimensions, but it prohibits stoves.
Though the 225-square-foot studios have a mostly open feeling, the one-bedroom, 275-square-foot apartments are subdivided into three distinct areas: a living area, a kitchen, and a bedroom. One advantage of the three-part division is that a tenant doesn’t have to keep the bedroom tidy; it remains out of sight.
On the sides of the building, most of the windows had been filled in over the years. “We reinstalled over 170 windows,” which let in abundant light, Granoff says. “They also let a lot of light out of the building.” The new brightness should make the Arcade a beacon in the financial district, he says.
No car-parking is included in the rent. A ramp leads to free bicycle parking in the basement—the city’s first bike garage.
On the ground floor are common spaces for residents, including a mail area, a laundry area, and a lounge with a flat-screen TV. The hope is that residents will be drawn from their tiny apartments into the illuminated atrium and from there to ground level, where they can spend time with fellow tenants or eat and drink at the three restaurants and cafes the developer is trying to recruit. Abbott foresees “a lot of social interaction” among residents.
Design-oriented shops
Along with three food-service establishments, Granoff hopes to install 17 stores in the ground floor. “It’s targeted retail—all design-based, to play on the artistic design strength that is Providence,” he says. Roughly 80 percent of the retailers will be small enterprises that already have a location elsewhere in the state. “The others,” he says, “are Internet businesses getting their first brick-and-mortar locations.”
The stores, like the apartments, will be small—350 to 370 square feet. That will be economical enough—costing about $1,000 a month, including property taxes—for merchandisers with modest budgets. Yet the revenue reaped by the developer should be the city’s highest on a square-foot basis, Abbott predicted.
Municipal aid
The City helped make the project feasible by granting the Arcade “a substantial reduction of property taxes” over about a decade, says Economic Development Director James Bennett. The Arcade (now being marketed as “The Arcade Providence,” an inversion of its longtime name) is one of 10 projects in the city that were designated historic and this eligible for tax breaks. In addition, the project qualified for state and federal historic tax credits.
The project was subjected to design review under the City’s Downcity Overlay Zoning District, which was established as a result of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company’s planning work in Providence in the early 1990s. Robert Azar, the City’s director of current planning, says the review was uncontentious, since little alteration was proposed other than installation of windows in positions where they used to be.
Philip Langdon’s latest book is The Private Oasis: The Landscape Architecture and Gardens of Edmund Hollander Design.