The Providence Community Health Centers works towards the revitalization of South Providence with the announcement of their project to build a new health center at the old Federated Lithographers site at 369 Prairie Ave in Providence. The site will be the home of a new 60,000 square foot clinic, a 42,000 square foot office building, a 5,000 square foot retail building and a three story parking garage. For more information on this project call Loretta Tharp at 401-444-0400.
PROVIDENCE — Nonprofit groups fill gaps in the economy. They provide food, shelter, health care and other basic needs to help those left out of the economic system.
Sometimes, nonprofits do more. They pump enough energy, brain power, resources and commitment into a depressed neighborhood to convince banks and companies that have stayed away to do business there because there is money to be made.
That’s the goal of two nonprofits, the Providence Community Health Centers led by CEO Merrill Thomas and the Lifespan hospital network run by president and CEO George Vecchione.
They have formed a partnership to push forward a plan to rebuild a section of South Providence, a troubled part of the city that has sunk even deeper during the recession.
This isn’t the first attempt to revitalize a poor neighborhood. Many grand visions never get off the drawing board.
But this one has a good chance because it’s practical, meets the missions of key participants and perhaps most importantly, it has some real dollars driving it.
The plan was hatched in 2002 after Thomas, who runs five community health centers in the city, decided he had to expand the network to meet the needs of people without medical care.
In 2003, his organization paid $965,000 to buy the abandoned Federated Lithographers mill site at the corner of Prairie and Potters avenues. Since then, much of the site that covers a city block has been cleared to renovate or erect three buildings on 4.5 acres.
Thomas wants to close the health center’s 8,000-square-foot Allens Berry location on Prairie Avenue and move expanded services into a 40,200-square-foot building on the site.
But here’s where the concept gets more ambitious.
Thomas needs paying tenants to fill the rest of the buildings to create a health services and retail complex that will draw people to the block and spur economic activity in the surrounding neighborhood.
To make it work, the project has been seeded with some public money, but will still need private investment and the political clout of local public officials to lean on institutions to complete the project
Thomas needed help to put together the pieces of the puzzle and hired Darrel A. Lee, an MIT business school graduate and founder and president of BCOG Planning and Development.
He scored a huge win when Lifespan agreed to lease space and be an anchor tenant in one of the buildings.
“Lifespan’s commitment makes my project viable,” said Thomas.
Vecchione said he agreed to the lease because the services Lifespan brings to the project will complement those provided by the health center.
“The partnership with Providence Community Health Centers is congruent with our mission to improve the health status of those we serve,” he said, “It also helps to provide a vital economic base for families and businesses in the immediate community.”
Vecchione’s commitment is crucial, but it’s only one of several necessary components.
Here are more details of the plan to fill out the 95,200 square feet in the three buildings:
Providence Community Health Centers will use all 40,200 square feet in a new building.
Lifespan will lease 27,000 square feet of the 50,000 square feet in a renovated building. LifeSpan has agreed to pay $5.5-million over 10 years.
Walgreens has signed a letter of intent to lease half of the 5,000 square feet in a new building.
Lee thinks he can push Walgreens to occupy the full 5,000 square feet, and also can find long-term tenants for the remaining vacant space.
He needs paying tenants and the revenue from the leases to fill out the financing on the project.
The total price tag is $38 million.
Providence Community Health Center already has invested about $3 million.
And Lee has managed to put together several other sources of funding:
A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grant for $600,000 for site cleanup.
A U.S. Department of Commerce predevelopment grant of $500,000 through the Economic Development Administration.
Federal new market tax credits valued at $8 million that can be sold or assigned and converted to equity.
State and federal historic tax credits valued at $7 million.
Lee also hopes to tap federal stimulus money made available for community center construction through the federal Health Care Reform Act.
When all those sources come together, Lee will still have a gap of about $10 million. That’s the amount that will have to be borrowed from a bank.
Lee said that after an experienced developer is chosen, he will approach a financial institution such as Bank of America, Citizens or Sovereign.
Despite the recession, with banks pulling back from construction loans, Lee said he can get it done because the project is bankable and has the backing of “founding institutional stakeholders” in the Prairie Avenue Revitalization Initiative, an alliance formed in 2005 that committed to the “spirit and goals” of the plan.
That group includes Bank of America, Brown University, Citizens Bank, Community College, La Reyna Development, South Providence Development Corporation, Urban League of Rhode Island, Women’s and Infants Hospital, Rhode Island Hospital and the Met School.
Also, City Councilors Balbina Young and Luis Aponte and Rep. Joseph Almeida, D-Providence, are long-term advocates for the project.
“The recession got in the way,” Young said, “But it’s going to happen.”
The politicians, Lee and the other partners said the $38-million core project on the city block will be a catalyst for $300 million in other commercial, retail and office activity in the surrounding area when businesses and banks see that the new health center will draw 80,000 to 100,000 patient visits a year and Lifespan’s facility will attract countless others.
The spinoffs, the advocates say, will include an adult education and job-training center, a medical diagnostics service, small businesses and homeowners who will stabilize the neighborhood.
That will create jobs for neighborhood residents, including many minority- and women-owned business that already have been working on the site for the last year.
There will be more opportunities for growth if South Providence can be rebranded with institutions that Rhode Islanders know and trust and that will make the area economically-alive again.
There’s still a way to go, and more institutions and individuals need to step up. But the nonprofits have built a foundation. Their commitment — eight years after the idea was born — remains unshaken.
“We’ll get it done,” Thomas said.
