While the 15-story Edge College Hill building is currently under construction on Canal Street, a proposal for a second 15-story building (Edge College Hill Two), will be heard by the Downtown Design Review Committee on Monday, January 8th.

Providence Business News reports on the proposal:

The application by Steeple Street RI LLC would place the Edge College Hill Two building at 131 Canal St., with frontage on Canal, Elizabeth and North Main streets, and wrapping around the historic Congdon & Carpenter building. The development pursued by Vision Properties, of Conshohocken, Pa., would require development rights transferred from the adjoining historical building to reach the proposed height of 15 stories. […] Michael Viveiros, a principal at the firm, said the building would feature one-bedroom and efficiency apartments, but with larger footprints than the micro-units to be offered in the first building. The two new buildings would not be mirror images in design. “We’re making a design very specific to the neighborhood and addressing what is a changing scale [in Providence],” he said.

The first thing to note, the image at the top of the post is a massing model, not a rendering as PBN identified it in their story. There is an important difference.

The project is asking to transfer development rights at Monday’s DRC meeting. If the Congdon & Carpenter buildings (the historic ones on the corner of Steeple and Canal, where Fat Belly’s used to be) weren’t there, 100′ buildings would be allowed in their place. Rather than tearing them down (the HORROR!) to attain that development potential, the developer is asking to transfer that potential to the vacant site. If approved, the building would be allowed to rise up to 158′.

The massing model is showing this full development potential. A rendering (which this is not) would show the actual layout of the structure.

I’m all about this potential development, but I would hope the building designed for this site would pull down at the corner of North Main and Steeple to be more in scale with the rest of the buildings at that instersection. A stepback along the lines of what is seen on RISD’s Prov-Wash Building (the one at the bottom right of the image) would be comfortable.

I’m also glad it will not be matchy-matchy with the building already under construction. I’m looking forward to seeing a rendering.

[box style=”red”]. It is assumed they are going into redesign and will return to the Committee at a later date with a new design. For reference, the images below are renderings from their presentation to the DRC on January 22, 2018 that they have since formally withdrawn from consideration. Renderings are by DBVW Architects .[/alert]

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