The Procaccianti Group is planning to raze the Fogarty Building at 111 Fountain Street to build a new extended stay hotel. Information below is from their submission to the Downtown Design Review Committee (DRC). This was scheduled to be presented to the DRC today, that meeting has been canceled due to the snow storm.

Project Information

Project Address: 111 Fountain Street

Project Description: 176 room Residence Inn hotel

Lot Size: 24,888 S.F. 0.571+/- Acres

Project Size: 127,500 GSF (includes tenant space)

Project Height: 101’-5 5/8” Top of roof structure – 9 Stories

Project F.A.R.: 5.12 (based on GSF)

Parking Spaces: 150 Parking spaces (at 1 Empire Site)

Architect: Group One Partners

Renderings and Elevations

My Opinion

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Meh. Look, I don’t actually want the Fogarty Building to come down, but that’s not a fight I’m going to win. If we must raze that building, let’s building something cool. I actually liked the Miami Beach general hospital from ’80s design they floated a year and a half ago. Not as a final design, but as a direction from which to refine a final design.

Years ago, The Procaccianti Group had grand ideas to redesign this area out to LaSalle Square with a number of new and renovated buildings, calling it the Power Block (which is a silly thing to call it). Those plans turned to dust with the recession, but one of the concepts that came out of that was ProJo’s then architecture critic giving the Power Block over to what he termed, a “modernist playground.”

The “modernist playground” concept was not an endorsement of modern design, but I like the idea of this area of town, which was probably most impacted by mid-century ‘urban renewal,’ as an area for modern design.

I’m tired of every proposal for new buildings in Providence having precast ornamentation which looks nothing like the historic detail it is trying to imitate and brick panels which look simply ugly. Looking at the website for the architect of this building, I’d much rather see their Envoy Hotel design from Boston than what we see here.