Providence City Council Meeting | October 29th, 2024 | Committee on Finance
Public Hearing: Tax Stabilization Agreement for 265 Manton Avenue
The committee opened a public hearing to review a proposed tax stabilization agreement for the adaptive reuse of the former Saint Teresa Church at 265 Manton Avenue into 26 residential units with a solar canopy. The developer and counsel presented project details and answered questions from council members regarding rent affordability, updated fiscal note assessments, and energy efficiency before the hearing was concluded without a vote.
Call to Order and Roll Call
Chair Helen Anthony called the regular meeting of the Committee on Finance to order following the conclusion of the public hearing. A roll call was taken by the clerk, confirming the presence of a quorum.
Motion to Continue Agenda Items 1 through 3
A motion was introduced and seconded to continue all items on the meeting agenda to the November 7th meeting. The motion was put to a voice vote and passed unanimously.
Adjournment
A motion to adjourn the meeting was made, seconded, and approved by all members in attendance. The meeting concluded at 6:22 PM.
Unknown
-
Good evening. My name is Helen Anthony. I'm the chair of the committee on finance, and I'm calling you to order our public hearing on Tuesday, 10/29/2024 at about 05:33PM. Madam clerk, would you please read the first agenda item? Ordinance establishing a tax stabilization plan for the property located at 265 Manton Avenue.
Unknown
-
And before we start, I would just like to recognize my fellow committee members. We have councilor Graves. We have councilor Sanchez. We have councilor Anderbaugh. We have we are missing well, I and we also have, I was committee members first.
Unknown
-
I'm sorry. Then we
Unknown
-
have
Unknown
-
councilor Vargas joining us and count and pro tem, Picciardo. So thank you so much. And we have our head of policy, Erin Gardner. And then we've got also Ken Scheverini from the city solicitor's office and our wonderful clerks Carissa and Donna. So thank you everyone for being here.
Unknown
-
And now we will hear from the applicant. And also would you like me to substitute, I know that this evening you have amended fiscal note, would you like me to
Unknown
-
there an amended fiscal note? I don't
Unknown
-
think seen it. I'm sorry, Clerk. Are we it was no. I know. We're just handout.
Unknown
-
Is there a handout on the fiscal note? Or did you include it in your presentation? We have the fiscal note. That's all I'm gonna say. Right.
Unknown
-
Alright.
Unknown
-
Right. They must have passed that out for us.
Unknown
-
Alright. Thank
Unknown
-
you. Alright. Thank you. Madam chair, members of the committee, council people, mister Cheverini, clerk's office, My name is Jeff Padua. I represent Paul Marks and his LLC, Manson Development Partners, with respect to our request for a tax stabilization agreement involving the adaptive reuse of the former Saint Teresa Church on Mountain Avenue in Olneyville.
Unknown
-
I will have mister Marks talk specifics and we'll go through the pictures. But just generally, mister Marks intends to revitalize this church with residential units. That church was closed by the diocese in 2009 because it needed a lot of repairs, million dollars worth of repairs at that time. The diocese decided that they did not have the funds or it wasn't worth investing. So they closed that church.
Unknown
-
They moved the congregation. And it's been deteriorating further ever since. Mister Marks will renovate the church. There will be 26 units. 23 will be one bedrooms with different configurations.
Unknown
-
There will be three two bedrooms, and there are 29 parking spaces. And above the parking spaces, he'll build a canopy that has a solar array. He's gotten all of the zoning for that project. Construction activities have already started, demolition, stabilizing the exterior, window work, roofing, various other things. And we're hoping with the tax stabilization, construction will continue and the construction will be complete in the fall of twenty twenty five.
Unknown
-
So that's sort of the general overview of the project. Now let me introduce, Paul Marks. And mister Marks, why don't you start off by just telling the committee a little bit about yourself?
Unknown
-
Please please speak right into that microphone so we can hear every word you
Unknown
-
have Good to
Unknown
-
evening. I'm here to present the request for a stack tax stabilization agreement. My background, I was born in Rhode Island. I grew up in Pawtucket. Attended school in Providence and then later high school in Pawtucket.
Unknown
-
I trained as a furniture maker. And when I went to my career, ended up my first job was in adaptive reuse, which was back in 1980 during the days of historic tax credits or much greater historic tax credits. And really cut my teeth in the real estate business doing adaptive reuse for both at residential and commercial uses.
Unknown
-
So tell the committee about the ownership structure. Certainly. I am the manager member of the LLC. Family members are the other members of the LLC. Your wife?
Unknown
-
My wife is is one of the additional members. And you you came to own the property or purchased the property in 2019 as a result of responding to an RFP that had been issued by the Providence Redevelopment Agency, is that right? That is correct. Why don't you just walk us through how that happened? Certainly.
Unknown
-
Redevelopment authority acquired the church couple of years prior to that, maybe longer. I'm not exactly. I was looking to see the check on the date which I don't have at hand. But they were advertising the property as an opportunity zone investment and someone from my office saw a listing for the church. The the combination of the adaptive reuse, the historic structure, as well as the opportunity.
Unknown
-
Our vision was our our tagline for the apartments is sustainable living in a historic location. So from the beginning, the idea was to do a deep energy retrofit of the church, which would make it viable from an operating perspective, and then to integrate that with a solar canopy. So that element was part of the initial concept. The initial concept was for a commercial use. It was to be a marketplace and a coworking space and an event space.
Unknown
-
We received our variances for the canopy at the outset of COVID. And, essentially, that whole concept was blown up, and the building sat while we tried to sort things out and move forward. In a couple of conversations, it was suggested to me to go back to the redevelopment authority and propose a residential use. And that was something that they were very receptive to. And that began the change from the commercial concept of the building to what is now the residential concept.
Unknown
-
Can you talk about job creation during construction and then after construction of this project? Certainly. We're projecting about seven seventy five full time construction jobs between all the trades. List we've done, you know, in conjunction with the asbestos abatement and the windows replacement, just the whole list of tasks that go in from taking a building that had been abandoned essentially for ten, twelve years and dealing with the fact that the roof had been open. There was deterioration.
Unknown
-
There were structural deficiencies. That whole process to conclusion will employ about 75 full time construction workers. There's a team of architects and engineers, which is about another eight to 10 people who have worked on designing both the solar component and the residential component. And going forward, there'll be a staff of five jobs, property managers, maintenance crew, janitorial staff that will maintain the building.
Unknown
-
Well, why don't we use the storyboards? Why don't you use the storyboards and walk us through the existing condition and then images of what it's gonna look like?
Unknown
-
I'm I'm not quite sure what the date of this article was, but I believe in 2015, the building was listed by the Providence Preservation Society as one of the 10 most endangered historical buildings. Hold that microphone up. Has everyone heard me? Yeah. And you can see that the rose window, all the stained glass had been removed and and boarded up.
Unknown
-
The building was boarded up. When we acquired it, there were broken windows. The mechanical systems, the copper had been stripped out of the building. The roofs on either side of the elevations were deteriorated to the point where the framing, the roof framing, the wood elements had deteriorated. And in addition to that, there was the asbestos, lead, and other issues would have to be addressed.
Unknown
-
This was the interior of the building when we first entered it. Magnificent magnificent structure. The the building has an interesting history. It was first constructed in 1890 as a wood frame post and beam collaborative building. Not anything like you see today or or what you saw.
Unknown
-
In 1935, all this plaster work and the brick veneer on the exterior of the building were constructed and and significant improvements. It was a magnificent magnificent. Up in the attics, there are murals which date back to the eighteen nineties. Unfortunately, much of it has been destroyed because when they added the, you know, you don't see them. But when you when they added the dormer windows in the 1930 in 1935, they pumped they pushed through where those murals are in order to bring light into these these spaces here.
Unknown
-
These dark arches were stained glass windows. So rather than have the stained glass windows on the exterior of the building, They brought them interior, and they were illuminated by natural light that came in through the dormers. They were light shafts. Sure. These are Exterior.
Unknown
-
Exterior. Okay. This was an early rendering of the proposed canopy. We had proposed a much larger solar array initially than what we have now. The city said having the having it on the slate was not something that they really wanted to have.
Unknown
-
So we did not we do not have this part of the solar array. Excuse me. But we have the solar array on the canopy, which is about 145 kilowatts.
Unknown
-
May I just ask a quick question? I'm sorry. Where are is the parking of all the cars underneath that canopy?
Unknown
-
Parking is underneath the canopy as you can see in that image. There are 29 spaces for the 26 units. Certainly. We can start with this one. This is the lower level.
Unknown
-
These are predominantly one bedroom units. They're approximately six fifty to 700 square feet, featuring the exposed brickwork and and much of what you see in mill renovations and and that much of the layout of the building was derived from the modules of the church, column spacing, the floor heights. So when we took that into consideration, we, on the on the 1st Floor, within the afts of the church, we have these duplex loft units, which are about eighteen eighteen feet from floor to ceiling. They're about six thirty square feet. And opposite the living space is the large cathedral window.
Unknown
-
So there's a 12 foot high or 14 foot high window that illuminates this double height space. The lower level. And so you have the lower level. You have the duplex units. And then on the Top Floor, which is at the very top of the apse, these are the niches.
Unknown
-
This is the original exterior, not exterior, but but framing of the original church, the eighteen nineties. This is where the murals were. And this is where we've removed much of the plaster work. But if you can visualize it, this is where the stained glass windows were. So we've created three levels within the apps, the duplex, and then the and then the one bedroom units on the Top Floor.
Unknown
-
So talk about the number of units and how they're going to be configured. Sure. So there are I don't have it right at hand, but they're
Unknown
-
approximately it's it's split of the 26 units were predominantly one bedroom units, either one bedroom lofts or one bed bedroom flats. And in the strange spaces of corners and old stairwells, we've put in a number of two bedrooms. We have an ADA accessible unit on the 1st Floor. Entryway to the building will be off the parking lot. The front door that leads on to Mantis Group, but primarily for egress.
Unknown
-
Square footage of the building, do you know that off the top of your head?
Unknown
-
They range for I'm talking about the entire space.
Unknown
-
Oh, the total square footage? Yes. I would have to read.
Unknown
-
So my notes reflect 21,300 square feet. Is that right? That is correct. And of which 16,000 is rentable.
Unknown
-
Correct. Okay.
Unknown
-
And the solar canopy is 8,342 square feet?
Unknown
-
Correct. All