KRC

I just had the pleasure of spending the past two weeks traveling on business in two major urban centers in America, Atlanta and Philadelphia. Spending a week in each city was a jolt of reality. I haven't lived in the Philly area for almost 20 years now so I guess I forgot just how violent that city really is. Both it and Atlanta boasted several shootings PER DAY on the news. I don't know what the exact numbers are, but from my persepctive both cities have a much higher violent crime per capita rate than Providence. At one point I laughed at myself when I realized that my biggest crime worry as a resident of Downtown Providence was graffiti. Graffiti? It kind of put things in perspective for me.

Does anyone know why surveyors have been in the parking lot next to the Federal Center at the corner of Snow and Westminster for the past several days? Comment on above: What happened to those buildings on the Hill is nothing short of a sin!

Hi, SOCOM. To give you a comparison, One Ten Westminster in Providence has more than 3 times the amount of requests than units. There are about 140 - 150 units and over 450 requests. I don't know how similar the markets are though, so that may or may not be a good comparison. I'm sure there must be an industry "average" as the real estate market is like sports casting and they have statistics on every little thing, but what that would be I have no idea.

Excellent point and I think you are exactly correct; however, I wouldn't hold your breath about a casino ever stepping up to the plate on that one.

Yes, I was just there about 6 months ago. Downtown is starting to look a lot better, but the city itself...jeesh! I really don't see how a casino there helped those who live there. Perhaps a few got a job, but otherwise it really hasn't helped the city in general in any quality of life issues.

Okay, crazy! Look at the lessons of Atlantic City alone (my old hometown). Detroit and New Orleans are no better off now then they were before (minus New Orleans obvious bigger problem today). Even Las Vegas' old town sucks now...unless, of course, you find yourself in the market for a bag of heroine in which case old downtown away from Freemont Street is the perfect place to be. The Strip is really nothing more than an adult play yard. It's not really urban. Casinos in urban areas are bad, bad, bad. They produce problems much worse then the solutions they appear to bring to the table. By the way, I am a gambler.

As a native Jersey boy, I can tell you RI is nothing even close to Northern New Jersey.

And you have to admit that it does look impressive from just about any angle of approach to the city. Like Providence, all of the towers in Hartford are clustered together. I like that. You should get a thread started in the Hartford area so we have it for reference like we do here for Providence.

Thank you very much, Indy. You did a great job.

Garris: I hope you don't mind (and if you do, please let me know), but I set this as my background on my computer. The Francis Street shot is beautiful.