It's 2nd downtown extended stay hotel to win over regulators this week

PROVIDENCE — After decades of rejected or abandoned plans, a hotel may finally be built on the grassy triangular lot at Memorial Boulevard and Steeple Street, the site of many art installations over the years.

The Capital Center Commission Wednesday endorsed a plan to build an eight-story, 120 unit suite hotel, costing $18 million to $20 million on the half-acre site, which the city has agreed to transfer in a $1 million lease-purchase deal.

The parcel’s odd geometry and history had combined over the decades to stymie attempts to build there, but after Wednesday’s vote, officials from the prospective developer, First Bristol Corp of Fall River, said they hope to break ground sometime this summer and finish 13 months after that.

First Bristol president James J. Karam said it will be a Homewood Suites extended stay hotel, part of the Hilton company. It will be aimed at the higher end of the market, he said, for people staying for longer than a few days.

First Bristol’s project was the second downtown extended stay hotel proposal to get regulatory blessing this week. On Monday, the Design Review Committee approved a request by the Procaccianti Group to demolish the Fogarty building so it could build a $40 million 154-unit extended stay Marriott hotel on Fountain Street. Construction is expected to start in the fall.

The Zoning Board of Review is being asked to exempt the proposed Capital Center project from signage, window size and other zoning rules while the Capital Center Commission needed to grant deviations from First Bristol's original plan for a 15-story hotel on the site. Karam said the site’s geology and the city’s economics wouldn’t support that big a hotel. First Bristol proposed the project in the fall of 2014.

“There is no market for it,” he said. “This [eight-story hotel] is the biggest building I can build and have it be economically feasible.”

Over the decades, the triangle of land was a dirt dump for surrounding projects, such as the downtown river relocations. Karam said, that meant it has different types of soils that would compress unevenly when a building is constructed. Supportive pilings weren’t an a answer, he said. The water table is only 10 feet down and beneath that are remnants of old wooden pilings, he said.

The Capital Center Commission approved the plan on a 6-1 vote, with member Enrique Martinez opposed. He said he was troubled that the hotel design didn’t make more of an effort to draw in pedestrians. A restaurant will be embedded in the building, he said, sealed off from the street.

“It’s hard to see how it relates to the other buildings,” he said.

Stephen Derdiarian, director of landscape architecture for VHB Inc., said pedestrians would be drawn in by a small park-like garden at the apex that points toward Memorial Boulevard.

It would feature a sculpture and benches backed by a planter, he said, to welcome people coming from College Hill. More plantings were planned along Steeple Street to the intersection with Exchange Street, he said, creating a greenery link to nearby Burnside Park.

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Document: Parcel 12 presentation for proposed hotel

jhill@providencejournal.com | On Twitter: @jghilliii