The Commons at Providence Station, a $55M apartment building near the State House, will begin construction after being awarded a $5.6 million tax credit.

PROVIDENCE — The first project to earn financial assistance under the state's new Rebuild Rhode Island tax credit program is expected to celebrate a groundbreaking Wednesday as the development team begins its $55-million construction of a six-story apartment building in the Capital Center District.

The real-estate development firm Trilogy Development LLC, of Providence, and the residential-management firm John M. Corcoran & Co. LLC, of Braintree, Massachusetts, are working as partners to develop The Commons at Providence Station. They've created a real-estate entity for this project, Capital Cove Development LLC, of Braintree, Trilogy President Kevin Chase told The Providence Journal on Tuesday.

Their 169-unit building will be at 80 Smith St., east of the railroad tracks and the State House, and at the intersection of Smith and Canal streets. The firms expect the one- and two-bedroom apartments to be completed in summer 2018 — and to rent for $2,000 and $2,700 per month, respectively, Chase said. The smaller units will be about 710 square feet, and the larger ones will be slightly larger than 1,000 square feet.

Two banks — Blue Hills Bank and Eastern Bank, both in Massachusetts — have loaned the partners 65 percent of the total project cost, Chase said. He would not say how much equity the two privately owned firms have invested.

The team's general contractor, Tocci Building Companies of Woburn, Massachusetts, has begun work on the vacant 2.85-acre parcel and should continue through winter, Chase said. The development will include two underground levels of parking, 169 spaces in all. Rhode Islanders should see the building taking shape above ground by spring, Chase said.

"It's exciting," Gov. Gina Raimondo said Tuesday. She expects to attend the groundbreaking Wednesday at 2 p.m. "It's the first shovels in the ground."

After the General Assembly adopted the Raimondo administration's package of economic-development incentives in 2015, including the Rebuild R.I. tax credits, the R.I. Commerce Corporation worked to develop program rules and regulations.

This January, the Commerce board approved its first two Rebuild projects. The Commons project was awarded a credit of $5.6 million. A credit of $2.73 million was awarded to a $10-million residential and commercial real-estate project by Bourne Avenue Capital Partners at 93 Cranston St.

The Rebuild program awards tax credits to developers once a building gets a certificate of occupancy. Then, the developers may use the credits to offset their own tax liability, or they may sell the credits to another entity or redeem them with the state for cash, at 90 percent of the value.

The Commerce Corporation has awarded Rebuild credits to 16 projects, although one project that won approval later withdrew from the program before finalizing a contract, Commerce President Darin Early told The Journal. In all, those credits equal $44.5 million. The projects are expected to cost $394 million to develop.

Eleven months after the Commons project won approval, Raimondo said the first project was expected to take time. But reflecting on nearly a year's worth of work and 15 projects that are in various stages of progress, Raimondo said results are beginning to show.

"Fifteen projects in a year is more than one a month," Raimondo said. "That's a very aggressive pace, and I'm pleased with that."

— kbramson@providencejournal.com

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