Déjà Vu All Over Again: Gano Street Apartments – Architecture Critic Morgan

Déjà Vu All Over Again: Gano Street Apartments – Architecture Critic Morgan

When we contemplate the plans for four, five-story buildings with 132 residential units on Gano Street, proposed by Fox Point developer Bahman Jalili, it feels as though we have been here too many times before. Nearly everyone agrees that the East Side needs more apartments, but these housing blocks are simply more of the same dull, uninspired ubiquiboxes that are making a mockery of the area’s nationally recognized historic and appealing townscape.

 

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Commenting about this project, Nina Tannenwald, a board member of the Wayland Neighborhood Association, exclaimed, “Unfortunately, this is another completely unimaginative set of buildings from cookie-cutter developer Bahman Jalili. This is a large site along Gano Street and deserves a seriously good project.” Furthermore, she goes on to note that the design is “lifted from a nothing-special building he is just finishing on Waterman and simply replicated four times.”

 

 

 

As Jalili’s development along Gano required the razing of three commercial buildings,  he met last autumn with members of the Fox Point Neighborhood Association. The FPNA criticized the lack of affordable units, as well as what was perceived as the “monolithic appearance” of the four housing blocks (the lot is only ¾ of an acre). This seems a bit of understatement, given the thoroughly low-end nature of the design. Even if these cubes were realized in astoundingly beautiful materials, it would hard to overcome what Tannenwald calls “the cheapo, junky feeling.”

This column has relentlessly argued for developers to work with architects. Some states even require that an architect be on record for any structure over a certain size. Nevertheless, simply paying an architect to stamp drawings does not guarantee a better product. The client, in this case the developer, has to want a quality design, something that will raise aesthetic standards, rather than depress them. Here on Gano Street, such flimflammery as changing the address to the far-tonier Power Street, recalls Professor Harold Hill’s sales pitch in the Music Man rather than serious urban development.

 

 

Let’s take a look at what is behind the showman’s curtain. Most architectural firms are obsessed about their websites, hiring noted graphic designers to give them informative, sometimes elegant, and often wickedly convincing visual experiences. It is somewhat surprising then, that for such a major project, Acme Architect has almost no internet presence, no record of past triumphs, no illustrations of existing or planned work. Represented by the decidedly amateurish GoDaddy Website Builder, Acme promises both “Expert Management, Quality Results,” as well as “Free shipping on all orders.”

Acme is listed as having three employees, but here we are presented with designers, planners, engineers, landscape architects, and marketing gurus, all set against the Little Compton skyline on its website.

The developer has modified his plans slightly since the meeting with the Fox Point advocacy group. The entrance to the ground-level parking garage will still be accessed from the Power Street extension, for example, but the driveway will be a little wider to increase visibility. Gano Street is traffic nightmare already, so despite an 87-page traffic study by the Beta Group, it is difficult to believe that adding 80-some resident cars to this stretch near the popular athletic fields and community gardens is practical, much less safe.

If the City Plan Commission approves this third-rate project (you have to wonder how it even got this far), it will mark yet another instance when Providence has been sold short by a worldview that sees only profit and fails to consider how good design can enrich our city and make it even more desirable. It is time we stopped being conned out of striving for the Providence we deserve.

City Plan Commission will review the plans on Tuesday, June 28.