Good afternoon. I'd like to call this meeting of the city plan commission to order. Today is Tuesday, December 16. It is 04:51PM. And before we we begin this evening's meeting, I would like to acknowledge the recent incident on the Brown University campus.
Events like this remind us how fragile life can be and how deeply violence affects not only those directly involved, but families, friends, and the entire surrounding communities. Providence is strong, vibrant, and notwithstanding incidents like the recent incident, a safe place to live. Maybe before now, we thought that this couldn't or wouldn't happen to us, but like so many other places, it has. Right now, we are all a little on edge because there is so much uncertainty and missing information. Please remember to be kind.
We are all doing our best, but emotions are running high. Our thoughts are with the victims, their loved ones, and everyone impacted by this tragedy, and I'd like to take a moment of silence now to honor the victims and to reflect together. Thank you. We will now move forward with our meeting and start with
the roll call. Sorry, Noel. Noel Santen. Hey, Paul. What?
Charlotte Lipschitz. Good, Mikael.
Miguel. So I'm manager card, DVD staff.
Sharon Gardner, board counsel.
And I'm Michael Gadsdaco, chair. We have, minutes from the 11/18/2025 meeting that have been circulated and drafted for your review and approval. Move to accept the minutes. And do you have a motion? Have a second.
There's a motion to approve the minutes as drafted. All in favor, aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any extensions?
The minutes pass. Next, we have been circulated with a draft calendar for the meeting scheduled for 2026 because this is the last meeting of 2025. And I had a suggestion to change the July meeting from July 21 to July 14, but, otherwise, the meeting schedule has drafted and circulated. Yeah. Commissioners, there are updated draft calendars which show the July 14 dates.
We'd be looking for either a a motion to approve or further edits to that calendar.
I'll make a motion to approve the calendar for the 2026 meeting date.
Okay. Do we have a second?
Second. Alright. There's a motion on the table to approve the 2026 meeting schedule. All in favor, aye. Aye.
Any opposed? Any abstentions? Then the meeting schedule is approved. Now we are on to the director's report. It's something we like to do at the at the closeout of every year, but we'll start with Bob first to see if there's anything aside of the year besides the year end closeout or year end review that Left puts together that he'd like to address.
Just that I apologize for the the video. We're having a little problem with our camera. We can't get it to stop moving. So apologies in advance if that's, annoying to people online. But, yes, all we have today for the director's report is our planner, Lev Simon, who does a great job of of keeping track of our stats of all the development projects that are happening in the city, all the ones that go through this body and, also the the other bodies, the downtown design review committee, the, historic district commission, and importantly, those projects that get reviewed administratively as well.
So go ahead, Lev. Just make sure you're speaking to that, Mike. Absolutely.
Commissioners, hello. I am here, this December as I have been for the last several Decembers, like Bob said, to give you the update on the status of city plan commission counting statistics, from the year of 2025. So this year, we have seen I have written here '92, but, actually, even in the time since I compiled bulk of this report one week ago, we have collected several more on this page at least. 92, what we call CPC cases, which is all land development projects and all subdivisions counted together. Now we're up to 95.
It's my expectation that we will reach near or even at 100 cases by the time that we get to the end of the calendar year, which would reflect the most CBC cases that we've had in a calendar year since before the financial crash in 2008. So I think we haven't gone over a 100 since 2006. So it's been a very, very brisk year, particularly for minor subdivisions. So here are my top number here is 23 administrative subdivisions. That's a pretty low number compared to recent years.
The 62 minor applications, including 47 administratively reviewed subdivisions, however, is a massive departure. This is due in large part to the work that you guys have done to update subdivision law to make it, in many cases, easier and more practical to do. This is definitely something that developers in the city have taken and ran with, which has been reflected in the stats from this year and likely, in the years of in the stats of many years to come. So in terms of things reviewed by you guys, you reviewed six minor land development projects and only one minor subdivision. Again, a huge sea change.
I'm sure that, many here in this room recall, the days of minor subdivisions coming to the city plan commission with great frequency. This year, only a single one that only made it to this board due to, its request for unified development review. In fact, this year, we've also changed you you guys have changed more accurately, the rules for minor land development projects. In the past, every single minor land development project would have been reviewed by the city plan commission. But this year, some have been reviewed administratively.
As a matter of fact, more, nine LDPs, minor have been reviewed administratively and were reviewed by the CPC, only six. In addition, the city plan commission reviewed seven, or received seven major applications of which you reviewed six. One of those was received back in 2023. And as always, there is a battery of other things that make it before the board as well or, the commission, I should say, including 13 city council referrals of seven zones, which encompass seven zone change requests, five ordinance text changes, and a street abandonment back in the early portion of the year. There have also been two IMPs, one for PC and one for Brown University Health, and, several major changes, four, which I believe is a recent maximum for major changes seen in a year.
have approved, you have made it to 304 units thus far approved, not including the results of tonight's meeting. We have an additional 355 units on the docket. I believe that that is the number. So if that is granted, some sort of approval, obviously, that would have an impact on this year's total stats. But these are seven total major and minor land development projects to contribute to the 304 residential units approved thus far.
In terms of total units approved in some form, including the minor changes, it bounced up to, alternatively, 305 or two ninety seven. Of course, there was one, major change that reduced units. That would be the major change of 116 Waterman, where the number of units went down to eight.
very brisk year for the CPC in terms of nonresidential projects, certainly the briskest in terms of years that I have been present working for the city. In some form, the board considered eight different projects in this category, including many, many schools, but also the DPW shed and a business park and an underwater cable storage facility. It's been, very brisk for you guys in terms of, nonresidential projects with a real, emphasis on institutional projects. But perhaps the real highlight is what has been done not at the CPC, what has been, handled in house for the first time ever. Certain minor land development projects have been handled by, the administrative planning staff.
And, this year, we are at 317, residential units approved through this pathway, which you may note is actually higher, at least thus far, than the number of units approved by the board itself. So a major change, that's not meant to be a pun, but definitely a real sea change, compared to how things have been done in years past versus this year. To cover just lightly some of the statistics from construction writ large in Providence for this past year, we have seen 703 permitted units this year. What's interesting about that number is that it doesn't have any particularly large projects contributing. The largest project within that 703 figure is only 48 units at 663 Admiral, which was permitted this year.
Other than that, it's been, everything smaller. In fact, to reach that seven hundred hundred and three number, more than ever so slightly, more than half of the units have been added from small projects. Just, little projects that add one to three units apiece, just through that pathway alone that, well, was contributed to three hundred and fifth '54 units, which is, I think, again, a testament to how the land development laws changed just in the very recent past in the city to allow for subdivision of small lots, to allow for the creation of new accessory dwelling units, all things that can make these little projects much more possible in ways that they didn't used to be possible just one or two years ago. I actually wanted to count call out ADUs specifically. There have been 44 approved this year, which has to be the most in Providence history.
You can compare it to last year where there were approved only tenants. And the year before that, where there was only a single one. So this has gone. This has really skyrocketed. And, of course, the ADU number reflects many different things.
It's both the creation of new units, the conversion of garages, basements, new constructions, the legalizations of existing units within dwellings, that have already been built. It's many different things, but still, it's a major change to, the status quo of development in the city. And it contributed to, definitely a meaningful percentage of the units being, rated in the city this year. In terms of COs, we made it to, oh, I've actually mixed up these numbers here. 686 is the number that should be right here.
I can actually change it because this is an active Word document. 686 units granted, certificates of occupancy this year, slightly higher than last year's where we made it to 634. For every statistic that I had mentioned thus far, I also wanted to just give a little 2024 comparison down below, where you can see just about across the board, we have slightly exceeded our totals from last year. There were only 630 some odd residential units permitted in 2024. And, on down the line, it's been just a little bit better in 2025.
One other thing I want to show specifically on the units. It's cool to get the numbers, but it's also fun to see where the units have come from compared to map to that effect where you can see where in town all these units are being added. So as you can see, it's been a quiet year in the downtown core and in some of the first spring neighborhoods. But as you go further away, land values get lower. There's more available land to buy, and the rate of development activity increases dramatically.
All of these little dots represent individual projects. If it's a yellow dot, it's small. And as the dot gets redder, the project gets larger. So you can see some of our largest projects over here, permitted this year. These were a couple buildings going up on Gano Street.
This over here is the 663 Admiral project that I mentioned earlier. So in terms of an actual physical development pattern that you can look at and it resembles a pattern, here it is. Just one other thing to say, and that is where we are in terms of our development project pipeline. This is something that myself and Bob and attempt to keep track of, successfully. Attempt is maybe the wrong verb.
But all of these, large projects that are going on in the city that are deserving of special consideration from, the city plan commission and from us, These get put into our development mapper and are shown to the public, so we're always trying to see where these things are. There are right now 95 projects that have reached that certain threshold of being large enough to include on the development mapper, and that represents almost 4,000 units, 3,889, 541 of which are affordable, and almost 250,000 or 100,000 square feet of commercial real estate. So that is the state of things. Feel free to ask me any questions, during or after the meeting. But, yeah, that is what the CPC has done this year and the state of the housing statistics of Providence for 2025.
Thank you very much, Lev. That was great. Any questions for Lev before he steps down? Alright. Thank you very much.
One note before we dive into the first agenda item. We are going to reorder the agenda. We are going to swap agenda items two and three. So it's going to be 11101 Elmwood Avenue, then we're going to go into the development and subdivision review regulations, and then we're going to end with the 27th East River Street agenda item. So first up is case number 25 202513 DPR.
It's 1101 Elmwood Avenue.
And I'd like to ask, is anyone from represent the applicant here? So, commissioners, a quick introduction.
You come up to the table, please?
So, commissioners, just a quick introduction. This is a request for a design waiver and from the regulation that no residential use be located within 20 feet of a main street. And in this case, it is a building on Elmwood Ave that has been constructed as a mixed use building and used as mixed use in the past, but has now seen the two commercial units on the Ground Floor become vacant. The applicant's here because they're requesting a waiver to convert those commercial spaces to residential. And so I think the applicant's here, they can just just give us a quick summary of what they wanna do.
Yeah. It was just, the plan is just to really
If you want, please, you might just Yeah. And, also, say your name.
Agassini. And, yeah, we're just seeking, just application here that's converted over to residential just because of recent issues with really trying to find tenants on the commercial side for for that space.
yeah, I gonna be a little bit more, a better function and usability of the space if it was converted over.
