Providence Committee on City Property-Monday, June 17, 2024-5:30 PM

Hi. Calling the speech to order. Welcome to the committee on city property. Today is Monday, 06/17/2024.

Chairman Gonzalez? Present. Register vice chair Andrew Evans is absent. Councilman Estinan? Present.

Councilman Graves? Nothing. Councilman Peterson? Present. Four present, one absent.

You have a form.

We have Clark, and just like to thank you first for

Item one, resolution authorizing the contents of the parcel located on Assessor's Block 34, Lot 21839 Mountain Avenue to PRA for the purpose of redevelopment thereof and for economic development and increased tax revenue.

Thank you. Alright. There's gonna be a member from the administration joining us today.

Stand

and raise your right hands, please. Name, and

department titles for the record, please.

Director of Real Estate, the Department of Planning and Development, and.

I'll turn it to director of this government.

Okay. I'll get to chief operating officer.

Thank you.

So not sure if he's gonna kick us off, but the floor is yours.

I'll just start, and then Nick can probably take some of the details. I think the last time I was before this committee, we have committed to a process of reviewing city owned vacant properties to start to bring those properties to market. And so we've done that. We've provided counselors with a list of properties in their ward, and Michael and Nick have been reviewing them. The properties before you are the first what we're calling bundle.

There will be more to come, but these will be transferred to the PRA to then be made available for redevelopment. The one that is different is number three on the list, 518 Hartford. That's the current Providence CAT Building. We're here before you tonight to transfer that to the PRA so the PRA can execute a transfer of that property to the Providence CAP agency, so they'll be the owner of that property. The relationship today has been that they've been a leaseholder of that building without having the benefit of owning it and being able to finance improvements.

And so that agency has requested that they have the opportunity to become the owner of that building so that they can make improvements and invest in the asset in the long term. So that is number three before the $51,800.

That's just. Great. So we'll open it up to meeting members. If we have just a bit of context for that. Yes.

Making sure. So the first drop on the list is 839 Metnav. It's 6,500 square feet, roughly two r two, and this is a property that is right for development. We've got calls about each of these properties, which is why we've determined that there's some demand for them after consulting our list of the overall universe of available properties. And we've talked...

Spoken with the council and ward in this case. It's Councilman Sanchez. And it's been determined that this is this is a good fit for the first one. 10,000 feet, the... What we're trying to accomplish here is to get property that's in city control out to the public so that it can be used to develop a house.

And in doing so, we get housing built, and we get that... Those properties back on the tax.

See that this this zoning here, is is our two... Is there any plan to make a work answer?

So I don't have the answer directly in front of you. I do know that if... Once the comp plan and related ordinances pass, this could be upgraded to a r three. So three family could theoretically be built there up to three. But currently, it's r two.

Just two storage. Two.

And it would, you know, be up to the developer to come before whatever is already committing to ask for any changes if they wanted to. It's hard to say. This has been a little bit of a detective exercise since we took a list that started from the tax assessor of every parcel, and we actually had to physically view every parcel to determine what was vacant and what is developable. And the history on some of these is obscure and hard to know. So I think they'll...

They are all different. And the goal of this exercise will be to clean up this list so that we don't have so many of them, and then we'll be able to keep a more tighter hold on the moving forward.

You you would find it in this ordinance, but you may... It may come up to other places. The has the flexibility to put in criteria like for affordable housing into its RFP or to add bonus points for affordable housing in the RFP. And then second, if they were to look for city support for the housing trust that also has its own parameters to support. Well, the general idea is not to find the developer for a particular property, not to bind their heads to see what kind of money out there is available.

You know, I write... I also had a less, small around availability than was expected, and so that means, to get stuff built, it might have to be market rate for this particular property. But we'll... The idea is to let the developer come to us and tell us this is what we can do.

The PRA board will eventually approve its future use. So Yeah. There's an opportunity for another entity that has council representation to try to steer it depending on what the proposals yield.

Item two. Resolution authorizing the comment of the parcel located on the status to a 36 Dot 91173 4th Street to for the purpose of redevelopment thereof and for the economic development and tax revenue.

Sure. This is another property that is deemed ripe for development. It's 3775 square feet. It's owned r three, so you can build up to a three family house. It is a smaller lot, but that is gonna be congruent with the upcoming zoning changes.

So, again, we'll let the developer see what we'll get proposed to build there, make sure it meets our criteria.

Right. We could put it through

our our peer rate in public process where we can on a one by one basis put this into making sure it goes affordable or keeping it open to what developer needs at the time. You're talking about $1.77 Ford, which is right next door? No. No. Just 173.

Exactly. Just the one that's there. Right. So we'll get the first Division gateway as far as the

Right. We can't because

special consideration made for it.

We would encourage the council to let these properties go through the normal process. Right? They're gonna have to conform with the rules of planning, and the PRA will evaluate proposals as the... As they come in. If we make it too restrictive and then nobody bids on it, it stays vacant and unproductive.

Yeah. I understand.

Those are those are

the great questions.

I I mean, this is just... Know, I I think we're we're bringing this stuff up because I'm sure that that they're

Item three.

Item three. Resolution authorizing for the comment on the parcel located on Assessor's Plot 112, Block 403518 Hartford Avenue to the BRS for the purpose of the development thereof and for the economic development and increase of tax revenue.

So this is the transfer of the Providence Capital that I mentioned earlier.

Thank you. I appreciate the

opportunity to speak to you all. As

as mentioned, we've been on application for a number of decades.

Ownership of this building is something that... Trying to do it for a number of decades as as this whole relationship would help us to... The asset would help us