>> Providence Downtown Area

[CtownMikey]

How has the snow removal been in downcity and other areas of Providence?

This storm wasn't that bad really.... everything is melting fast, and it is going to be in the upper 40s to 50s until saturday, but still, were sidewalks shoveled?

In Cranston, (I live next to an elementary school) the cops came to my door and asked my dad to shovel the entire sidewalk area of our house (a looong sidewalk in my opinion), or he would give us a hefty fine of some sorts. This was a first time thing for us... I just wish every household/business had this requirement.

[runawayjim]

How has the snow removal been in downcity and other areas of Providence?

This storm wasn't that bad really.... everything is melting fast, and it is going to be in the upper 40s to 50s until saturday, but still, were sidewalks shoveled?

In Cranston, (I live next to an elementary school) the cops came to my door and asked my dad to shovel the entire sidewalk area of our house (a looong sidewalk in my opinion), or he would give us a hefty fine of some sorts. This was a first time thing for us... I just wish every household/business had this requirement.

the storm was bad in how fast it fell. it's gonna melt fast, but the problem lies in the fact that it's still around freezing at night, so everything gets more dense, making it harder to melt.

it's a prov law as well to shovel your sidewalk. it needs to be enforced. the day after a snow storm, the police should be canvassing the neighborhoods, just driving by and if they see one that's not shovelled, they should give them a written warning givnig them 24 hours to shovel (this makes it 48 hours, twice the time the law gives you to shovel) and keep track of the addresses. the next day go around again. if they still haven't shovelled, ticket them. the other thing that bugs me is in my neighborhood, there were a lot of corner houses that shovelled teh walks, but didn't shovel out the corner so you had to climb over a snow pile to get out.

the snow is gone from my street, but they were slick monday night still and there was an accident near me. i suspect someone was trying to stop and slid into an intersection (he was coming off a tiny road onto eaton st). so some roads aren't that great...

[Recchia]

How has the snow removal been in downcity and other areas of Providence?

This storm wasn't that bad really.... everything is melting fast, and it is going to be in the upper 40s to 50s until saturday, but still, were sidewalks shoveled?

In Cranston, (I live next to an elementary school) the cops came to my door and asked my dad to shovel the entire sidewalk area of our house (a looong sidewalk in my opinion), or he would give us a hefty fine of some sorts. This was a first time thing for us... I just wish every household/business had this requirement.

I wish they would enforce this in Pawtucket. Some people don't shovel at all, and others leave huge piles in the sidewalk. Damn lazy people.

[Cotuit]

Froma Harrop: After the snow, disgrace [ProJo.com]

[JJK5]

Froma Harrop: After the snow, disgrace [ProJo.com]

I remembe having my parents visit in December. We were walking on Federal Hill and I don't think it had snowed for 3 days, but the walks were still covered in snow and ice. There's really no excuse for areas that rely heavily on foot traffic to not have their walks cleared.

[bloodyrocker]

I wish they would enforce this in Pawtucket. Some people don't shovel at all, and others leave huge piles in the sidewalk. Damn lazy people.

I totally agree. I know its against the law.. give the city a call if it gets bad. I know they want to hear from people that care and it'll never get better unless we make it better.

[Frankie811]

Did anyone attend the DOWNCITY OLYMPIC WINTER FEST? How did it go? Did many show up?

[Cotuit]

It's still going on, I might check it out tomorrow night.

[Frankie811]

I think Brussat is losing it. What is he trying to say here? I don't like his "Dr Downtown" articles.

http://www.projo.com/opinion/columnists/co...s.178b9754.html

[Garris]

I think Brussat is losing it. What is he trying to say here? I don't like his "Dr Downtown" articles.

http://www.projo.com/opinion/columnists/co...s.178b9754.html

This article was actually more coherent than his usual flight of ideas in "Dr. Downtown" articles. I could actually follow this to a degree...

From the article: "Aren't all the greatest, most beloved cities, the ones we go to visit, "museums stuck in time"?

Um... NOOO!! NYC, Chicago, Seattle, SF, Miami, Boston, etc are all thrilling combinations and tensions of old and new! Cities as "museums" are just that: museums. I don't want to live in a museum, I want to live in a growing, evolving, vibrant place that preserves and supports the past while contextually adding to its fabric in fashioning a new future. Who said Providence should be cast in amber at 1890?

- Garris

[Recchia]

Dear Dr. Downtown: Stop torturing us with your stupid pointless jibberish! -Pissed off at you in Pawtucket

[Cotuit]

From the article: "Aren't all the greatest, most beloved cities, the ones we go to visit, "museums stuck in time"?

Um... NOOO!! NYC, Chicago, Seattle, SF, Miami, Boston, etc

Barcelona

Dear Dr. Downtown: Stop torturing us with your stupid pointless jibberish! -Pissed off at you in Pawtucket

[Cotuit]

Does anyone else find it interesting that the only 'people' who ever write to 'Dr. Downtown' are from the suburbs?

[Recchia]

Does anyone else find it interesting that the only 'people' who ever write to 'Dr. Downtown' are from the suburbs?

Of course, all the more reason that Dr. Downtown should move to South County and be Dr. Suburb instead. I hate listening to the opinions of those who don't even live in the city, especially those ignorant ones that are afraid of it yet still think they can judge it.

[Recchia]

Dave Brussat's Latest

Well he's at it again. This one is about the racket downtown caused by the bars in and around Westminster, and how it's going to be hard to sell condo units there if all the noise continues. At first I was agreeing, as he was going on about staggering the closing times of the bars, etc. and adding more nighttime activity to the street in the form of retail, cafe's open late, etc.

Then he kinda started to go off and suggest that nightlife is ruining downtown....so I changed my mind.

[runawayjim]

Dave Brussat's Latest

Well he's at it again. This one is about the racket downtown caused by the bars in and around Westminster, and how it's going to be hard to sell condo units there if all the noise continues. At first I was agreeing, as he was going on about staggering the closing times of the bars, etc. and adding more nighttime activity to the street in the form of retail, cafe's open late, etc.

Then he kinda started to go off and suggest that nightlife is ruining downtown....so I changed my mind.

i don't know about staggering the closings of bars, but allow places like diesel and the complex stay open later than 2. let them close at 4. cut off drinking at 2 and let them stay open as a juice bar or something with the music still going so people can still have fun. a lot of people go to those places because they like to dance, not to get drunk.

get lupos their own venue!!! this will help the line of people waiting to get into diesel on thursday-saturday nights. people will still show up late, but some will arrive earlier.

nightlife is important to the success downtown, perhaps more important than the condos and the yuppies who buy them. something does need to be done about the bottleneck and the screaming "droogs", but killing the nightlife is not the answer.

[CtownMikey]

I'm close with the club scene "higher ups"... i guess you could say. The ultimate goal is for the strip of clubs on Richmond and Pine street to be moved near the strip clubs, most of which are shady and some are all nude, away from downtown. JWU owns all or most of that land I believe near the Complex and Mirabar. They want to knock down most of the area and create parking and I think maybe add more classrooms. They already deny Mirabar and The Complex and the public the use of the parking lot that was once a free for all, if u wanted to pay $8 bucks.. I hear money is even being offered for some clubs to move.. but the money is such a cheap amount.. it would just about cover the cost of a new building itself, nothing inside.. and the rest would have the come from the club.

I dont understand why the city would want to drain life from it's core. I also dont understand why the city cant take a chance on later closing times.

(What brings me to Providence?) Right now I'm 19, I go to Providence Place, I rarely visit friends at JWU, and I go clubbing. Besides resataurants, nothing outside of the mall is interesting enough for me to go and see. The shopping on Westminster isn't for me, and I'm not huge into the arts and culture scene yet. If these clubs are all moved out of downtown, then I will just take rt 10 to the mall exit and BAM... i will never step foot on the streets of downtown again. Just because most clubbers are around my age, and we may not have huge salaries, I still strongly believe that we are a huge asset to downtown. I think it will be a huge mistake.. this is the last issue that needs to be tackled in Providence. Extend the curfew and let it go to see what happens

What has been done in other successful cities that have had this problem?

[CtownMikey]

from the Brussat's article ..

"I hear that the Peerless Building has not surpassed 65-percent occupancy because of frustration over the racket."

Is this true?

[runawayjim]

What has been done in other successful cities that have had this problem?

hartford's main club/bar area is literally restricted to a couple blocks, but it's all bars and clubs in that area. providence has them spread out around downtown a bit more. this is part of the issue i think. however, i do not think it's good to have them the way hartford does, it doesn't have people around the city.

new haven has them spread out more, but there's not much for higher class condos near the bars/clubs there.

my solution? get people to live in them that truly enjoy everything that makes up a city. that's really what it comes down to. the people who complain don't want to live in a city, they want to live in an urban-like suburb.

[Garris]

Minneapolis rejuvenated their run down Warehouse district by essentially turning it into a "club" district, very successfully. While there certainly are establishments scattered elsewhere in the city, the bulk of the clubs (ranging from teen dance, to more hardcore clubs, to gay/lesbian, to nude) were mostly all here. It also had the effect of attracting other businesses to that area that wished to be viewed as edgy, including restaurants and retail. It was at the North edge of the downtown, as you can see in this photo of the Warehouse district I took (note the skyscrapers of the center of downtown in the distance)...

To be honest, I always thought as Providence starts to develop a downtown residential district that having a flanking club district would be a good idea, especially as a way to rejuvenate other parts of the city. That said, I also think people living in a city should be ready to expect some collateral noise.

A city downtown that's pin-drop quiet at night??

- Garris

[CtownMikey]

I think if they are forced to move.. someone must pay for EVERYTHING.. right up to the DJ booth and special lighting.. then it will be okay.

Also, since we have a respectable nightlife in Providence, it wouldn't hurt to have some type of planning committee if they want to move all the clubs together in a new area.... just to make it work even better than what we have now. Just make a strip with a few places to eat in between. maybe just a 24 hr 7-11 and a 24 hour Denny's.

It just seems like the city doesnt give a sh*t at all...

[runawayjim]

I think if they are forced to move.. someone must pay for EVERYTHING.. right up to the DJ booth and special lighting.. then it will be okay.

Also, since we have a respectable nightlife in Providence, it wouldn't hurt to have some type of planning committee if they want to move all the clubs together in a new area.... just to make it work even better than what we have now. Just make a strip with a few places to eat in between. maybe just a 24 hr 7-11 and a 24 hour Denny's.

It just seems like the city doesnt give a sh*t at all...

i think the city knows that they can't toss out the nightlife. i don't think the city would sanction anything like that. the building owners will throw them out (like lupos) at the end of the lease. but the only way they can really do some re-planning is to come up with a concrete plan and lots of studies to prove it'll work.

i think what they need to do is take a month and run a pilot of changing the closing time from 2 to 4. they don't even have to change the alcohol time, just the time they can close. let them stay open. let people dance off their last few drinks. i bet you'd see a big change.

there's a place in new haven that stays open late on saturday nights (it's also gay night on saturday nights, but i don't know if that makes a difference or not). after 2, they stop serving alcohol, but people can still hang out. and they do. why don't the clubs here do something like that?

[Mij]

I think if they are forced to move.. someone must pay for EVERYTHING.. right up to the DJ booth and special lighting.. then it will be okay.

Also, since we have a respectable nightlife in Providence, it wouldn't hurt to have some type of planning committee if they want to move all the clubs together in a new area.... just to make it work even better than what we have now. Just make a strip with a few places to eat in between. maybe just a 24 hr 7-11 and a 24 hour Denny's.

It just seems like the city doesnt give a sh*t at all...

The city may not, but the new residents are. The pearless building is at 65 % capasity and this could force the hand of local investors. Todays projo... RI section (not sure who) had a little article about how the nite life is, for the worse, affecting the buying of these condo's and lofts. It even mentioned that at one point there was an idea on the table to have mobil court rooms were a person could be judged right after being arrested. This would limit the overflow at the court systems in the city and state, serve as an example for holligens and create a security blanket for the residents throughout the naiborhood of down city....

For one - I lived (past tence) in the Alice White Building ~~~ I would work late on the weekends just to avoid the crazy mess that was created after the 2:am hour. It would become complete non-sence. For the rent that was being paid, this quickly got old.

The bottle neck was to much. The best way to deal with this is to stager closing times, not push the problem onto another part of the city that might already have issues to deal with.

Maybe someone could dig up the article i mentioned...

[runawayjim]

The city may not, but the new residents are. The pearless building is at 65 % capasity and this could force the hand of local investors. Todays projo... RI section (not sure who) had a little article about how the nite life is, for the worse, affecting the buying of these condo's and lofts. It even mentioned that at one point there was an idea on the table to have mobil court rooms were a person could be judged right after being arrested. This would limit the overflow at the court systems in the city and state, serve as an example for holligens and create a security blanket for the residents throughout the naiborhood of down city....

For one - I lived (past tence) in the Alice White Building ~~~ I would work late on the weekends just to avoid the crazy mess that was created after the 2:am hour. It would become complete non-sence. For the rent that was being paid, this quickly got old.

The bottle neck was to much. The best way to deal with this is to stager closing times, not push the problem onto another part of the city that might already have issues to deal with.

Maybe someone could dig up the article i mentioned...

can't find the article online... looked in the metro section and the main RI section.

i would be pissed at the bottle neck too. hopefully re-routing 195 will help (is it even supposed to help this?). they need to direct people in cars in different directions. they shouldn't have them all going for 95, they should turn them towards 195. the people who live in the city should know their way around enough to get around to where they need to go and the others can take 195 to 95. or force cars parked in certain areas to go certain directions. half to 195, the other half to 95 by the mall or dean st.

i don't know about the staggering of closing times, but a blanket extended closing time would help. some people want to stay out until 4, others don't.

but a big issue is those that moev downtown should expect it to be a city and not expect it to be quiet. otherwise they should just move to the burbs.

[Cotuit]

I'm quick to defend the Providence Police, but they've really dropped the ball on a lot of enforcement issues. Laws aren't being enforced and people run amok because they can, aren't punished, and see no sign that they will be punished. If the police would set up enforcement (especially drinking age violations) people would know that the city is serious about enforcement, and the bad seeds would go elsewhere.

Examples of bad seeds (and taking from a comment in the Thayer Street thread), my brothers used to drive from the Cape to Providence when they were under aged because they knew they could be served here. When people worry about people coming from across the state to drink in Providence, this is what they are talking about (though my brothers didn't hang out on Thayer, they went to the clubs around Richmond).

Drunk 25 year olds are a very different animal from drunk 18 year olds. The problem is by no means confined to youth, but when one group acts out, and goes unpunished, it encourages those that would ordinarily behave to follow suit.