expanding waterfront public space: overview | letters of support  

EXPANDING WATERFRONT PUBLIC SPACE: OVERVIEW

The riverwalks of Providence create a gracious ambiance, inviting visitors and residents alike to walk through the city. They make Providence far more attractive, both physically and economically, and have led to Waterfire, which has become the city's distinctive symbol, in much the same way the Empire State Building symbolizes New York or the Eiffel Tower Paris.

The riverwalks exist today because the city's visionaries understood that investing $60 million to redesign bridges and build riverwalks would pay off in the future, and they were right. Today Waterfire is a major attraction that boosts our economy by an estimated $20 million a year in audience spending.

Two Major New Assets for Providence

Now, with the relocation of Route 195, we have a crucial opportunity to build on that success. As the riverwalks are being extended south toward Corliss Landing and Narragansett Bay (and will also soon extend north to Olneyville and beyond), we can enhance the city immeasurably by expanding India Point Park to meet the riverwalks at Fox's Point, the area just south of the hurricane barrier. Linking these two urban treasures -- the Park and the riverwalks -- would complete the project as originally envisioned and would create two major new assets for Providence:

• Fox's Point, the maritime gateway to the city with its beautiful vistas of Narragansett Bay, could become a major attraction, and
• A continuous waterfront park could meander through the city, stretching for miles from Olneyville down the Woonasquatucket and Providence Rivers, and along an expanded India Point Park to the Seekonk River, where it would link up with the East Bay Bike Path to Bristol and the proposed Blackstone Bike Path to Woonsocket.

Providence can become renowned for its urban parks, as well as its riverwalks, if we will learn from other cities' mistakes. Boston and Philadelphia, for example, have gracious walkways along their rivers, but they long ago lost the chance to connect them to their harborfronts. By allowing the land in between their greatest natural assets -- their rivers and harbors -- to be built up, they created impenetrable barriers that diminish both assets, and the cities themselves.

If we act now with the same civic vision that built our riverwalks, we can do it differently. We can add a graceful beauty to Providence that will endear people to our city for many generations. We can create two new attractions that, like our riverwalks, will provide major benefits for both visitors and residents:

Fox's Point could become a maritime focal point for Providence. We are after all the capital city of the "Ocean State," which has a long and proud maritime heritage. The working tug boats at Fox's Point should be the cornerstone for celebrating that heritage. The area could also accommodate docks for the historic Sloop Providence, the new steamship line, and the Newport ferry. Fox's Point is an ideal location for a marine transportation center because of its proximity to Heritage Harbor Museum and downtown Providence. The area could also accommodate some small-scale, marine-related enterprises, such as a fish market, a marina, and a restaurant with water views. This spectacular location at the maritime gateway to Providence would attract people in the same way the Gateway Park does in St. Louis.

• A continuous waterfront park through the city would grace Providence with the kind of "emerald necklace" that Frederick Law Olmsted envisioned for Boston's Jamaica Plain, but was never completed. Imagine the boon to our civic life if Fox’s Point became a destination that people could walk or bike to from Olneyville, from the East Bay Bike Path, or from the proposed Blackstone Bike Path -- a place where people could meet, have lunch, take a ferry, or buy fresh fish for dinner. Our proposal for a Fox's Point waterfront park is compatible with Mayor Cianci's New Cities vision for the West Bay waterfront, but that proposal is a distant dream. A park at Fox's Point is within reach: it could enhance the city in a matter of years, not decades.

Just as a necklace of emeralds loses its composite luster if its string is broken, so the jewel of our waterfront park will not serve its public function -- or reap its potential of lasting benefits -- unless it is continuous. Bill Warner's 1992 plan for moving Route 195 envisions an unbroken waterfront greenway, and the Olmsted Brothers planning firm also proposed a continuous park for Providence in 1908. Now we can make these visions a reality by setting aside the land south of the new Route 195 as a wide, shoreline buffer accessible to everyone, visitors and residents alike. The substantial land that will be freed up when 195 is relocated -- the downtown areas on the other side of the highway from the harborfront -- will be available for commercial and residential development.

The Missing Link

The one remaining piece of land between the tug boat company at Fox's Point and India Point Park -- the former Bootlegger's property -- is now in public hands. The state bought it last year, largely with federal highway funds, to make way for the new Route 195. The Transportation Department has a wonderful opportunity to help create a seamless waterfront park by transferring this property to the city parks system.

We believe it would be a serious mistake for the state or the city to allow the commercial or residential development of this critical waterfront site, thereby losing forever the possibility of a unified shoreline greenway. By interrupting the continuity of public access to the shore, government officials would be repeating, rather than learning from, Boston's failure to follow Olmsted's vision of connected parks. In the future people would ask, why did Providence permit the loss of this irreplaceable piece of waterfront next to a public park?

The creation of India Point Park 27 years ago provides an important precedent for its expansion today. Initial funding for the Park came from government highway money that was set aside to compensate the city for the loss of parkland and the disruption of Roger Williams Park when Route 95 was built. Similarly today, new traffic patterns resulting from relocating 195's entrance and exit ramps will greatly increase traffic and its attendant noise, fumes, and congestion on India Street bordering the Park. Accordingly, the government should again use highway funds to compensate the public for the disruption of invaluable parkland.

We welcome the new steamship line to Providence, but unfortunately, the decision to locate both the ferry and steamship line within the Park, without a compensating expansion, further exacerbates congestion in the Park's small land area, to the detriment of public enjoyment of its natural, unencumbered environment. This decision also creates hazardous congestion on the water for the Community Boating Center's small boat sailing program. A marine transportation center at Fox's Point would minimize both land and sea congestion.

Waterfront Parks in Other Cities

"The broader the zone of overlap between land and water, the more successfully a city captures the benefits of its water resources."

-- Harvard Urban Planning Prof. Alex Krieger

Preservation Magazine

• Boston's broad parkland on the banks of the Charles River is uninterrupted by commercial development. All large buildings along the river are located away from the water's edge, on the other side of highways. Imagine the loss for Boston if the Hatch Shell, where thousands of people enjoy Boston Pops concerts by the river, were instead a hotel.
• Chicago spent $100 million to move a highway in order to broaden its lakeshore park, which now attracts thousands of people to a network of museums and other attractions.
• San Francisco spent hundreds of millions of dollars to tear down the Embarcadero highway in order to make the waterfront along the Bay more accessible to people.
• At a Harvard conference on urban waterfronts two years ago, speakers repeatedly "warned against the allure of thin-line planning of waterfronts," according to Prof. Alex Krieger. One speaker emphatically advised: "Do not lead with your best sites. The early investors want the best locations but do not do the best projects."

Friends of India Point Park is a group of concerned citizens organized to protect and improve a Park that has won our hearts. We have active committees working on Park expansion, Park improvements, Park cleanup and maintenance, and traffic and public safety issues. We welcome the assistance of individuals and organizations to help protect and expand the Park and thereby enhance the city.

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