NEWS & CITY LIFE
O p-Ed | By Barry Fain and Steve Triedman
OP-ED: Look! Up in the Sky…. Can this latest plan to save Superman fly or is it laced with Kryptonite? We would all love to see the old Industrial Bank building, AKA the Superman building, saved. It’s an iconic symbol of the Providence skyline…but it’s been vacant for almost a decade. Recently, the owner of the building, High Rock Development from Boston, has been trying to give it another shot. While some groups, preservationists for sure, were excited by the company’s renewed interest, others were more cynical. Rather than seeing a golden opportunity, they saw the owner, as well as the building itself, full of Kryptonite. So before the debate over this newest development gains any real steam, let’s pause for a reality check of where we are. You can’t fault the Preservation Society for not trying their best over the past few years. Every idea was entertained. Creative charrettes exhorted RISD architectural grad students to think out of the box, and they did. The building was placed on their “most endangered species” list for years, but no realistic, financially viable proposal came forward. Five years ago, respected preservationist and downtown developer Buff Chace and his company Cornish Associates were hired to evaluate potential uses for the building. No concrete, or granite as would be more apt, solutions came forward to spur development. If there was a realistic opportunity for a developer to make money on the property, trust us, it would have already happened. The major stumbling blocks remain: The massive cost of rehabilitating and converting the building, and would a conventional bank or even an investment group finance the part of the deal above the subsidies? Even with this new proposal, the odds still remain “highly unlikely.” And let’s be real here. The building has significant exterior issues, and to our knowledge there have been no architectural and engineering analyses on the complexity and extent of converting the building
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ProvidenceOnline.com • October 2021
