Providence should consider bulldozing elements of I.M. Pei-designed Cathedral Square as part of a plan to "complete and connect" downcity Providence, according to urban planner Andres Duany.
Duany's presentation was the culmination of a week of nine public meetings and was held Thursday night in the Grand Ballroom of the Biltmore Hotel with Mayor David Cicilline '83 in attendance. Duany took the stage in front of a capacity crowd in the 17th-floor room, which provided spectacular views of much of the city he proposed overhauling.
The meetings covered a range of topics on the future of the downcity area, which includes City Hall, Trinity Repertory Theater and the Biltmore Hotel - from connections to the West Side to building codes.
Duany's presentation included a slide show with aerial photographs and detailed drawings of his ideas. All of Duany's proposals aimed to create an improved, more unified downcity, with expanded parking and increased access to surrounding neighborhoods.
"As in nature, in urbanism everything is tied to everything else," he said.
Of Duany's wide-ranging recommendations, the most forcefully delivered was his plan to raze the Bishop McVinney Auditorium in Cathedral Square.
Duany called Cathedral Square a "disgrace."
"Nobody likes it. There was a kind of strange unanimity here," he said.
Duany also suggested that the Holiday Inn hotel and adjacent LaSalle Square, next to the Civic Center, should be revamped. He said the hotel was a product of the low point of Western architecture - the 1970s. Although some developers have plans to construct a traditionalist veneer for the building, Duany rejected the idea in favor of a radically modern modification or addition.
"This thing is a modernist building - take it for a drive," he said.
Duany also pointed to the dilapidated brick sidewalks downtown as a preventable embarrassment and suggested concrete as an affordable alternative.
Despite his critical recommendations, Duany offered a bright outlook for downcity and Providence as a whole.
"The failure of the promises of suburbia have been such that people are coming back to the cities," and Providence will "ride that," he said.
The planned project to move Route 95 outside of downtown will be a significant improvement, Duany said. "It's gonna be like taking off some tight clothing."
Even more important is the city's "very good genetic material," Duany said. Although Providence was "trashed" in the 1960s and 1970s, it is a fundamentally well-designed city, he said. Its sophisticated grids and narrow streets still exist, even if they sometimes have to be uncovered.
"Westminster Street is one of the great streets in the United States," Duany said. "To have a street so intimate in the urban core" makes it a treasure.
He said Providence's architectural strength lies not in great buildings, but in its coherence; there is a "modesty to the architecture here that is becoming," he said.
Duany also presented several possible locations, including the old Providence Journal Building, for a six-screen movie theater proposed by a developer. Depending on its placement, the theater could be a powerful binding force for downcity, he said.
Duany praised Cicilline's appointments to the Transit Agency, Police Department and Planning Department as huge improvements over the last administration. Cicilline attended the presentation and thanked Duany at its conclusion.
"I think tonight's presentation has really captured my spirit," he said, and "it's gonna require us to think big."
Developer Arnold "Buff" Chace, who introduced Duany, said more than 1,200 people participated in the week's events.
