Head over to the Daily Dose to see what Rep. Segal is up to lately.

Of special interest to readers here, is the Demolition Bonds Bill:

H7584 would allow cities and towns to require demolition bonds and other assurances from developers that want to tear down historic buildings, and is inspired by the rash of demolitions in downtown Providence over the course of the recent boom years — none of which have yielded the promised new developments.

I’ll have more info when I get a chance to chat with Rep. Segal about it.

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Photo (cc) bunkosquad

4.01 Uncaucus Listening Party

It’s an undebate: citizens talk while the candidates listen!

Thursday, April 1, 2010 – 6:30pm-10:00pm
Waterplace Restaurant
One Finance Way, Providence, RI

Join founding members of the Uncaucus, friends, fellow voters, and comrades from the city of Providence in an UnDebate, where those interested in serving as our next Mayor listen instead of talk.

Candidates Steven Constantino, John Lombardi, Daniel Harrop, and Angel Taveras have agreed to participate (thank you!). Carrie Marsh, and Joe Paolino who have yet to declare candidacy but remain interested in the race, will also join us. All candidates, declared and undeclared, are welcome to join. Will update the invite as more RSVPs from candidates come in.

The event will be moderated by Mike Ritz, who will help keep the conversation positive, forward looking, and, in true Uncaucus style, fun.

FREE Valet parking is available. There is limited on-street parking as well. Additional parking is available at the Providence Place Mall across the street. The event is FREE and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served alongside a cash bar. Look forward to seeing you there!

In other Uncaucus news, read PBN’s Five Questions with the Uncaucus founders.

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RIDOT has a set of photos on their Flickr page of the raging Pawtuxet River.

Flickr

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One of our Facebook fans shared this link with us.

A 40-minute video of Brown University’s assistant vice president for planning, design and construction, Michael McCormick discussing Browns recent campus building and near future plans, including much on the Jewelry District plans. There is a link to a 10-minute condenced version to give you the gist of what he had to say. The video is not embedable, so you’ll have to follow the link over to Brown’s site to view it.

In other Jewelry District News, ProJo reports today that URI and RIC are planning to team up to build a Nursing School on a portion of the land being vacated by Route 195 in the Jewelry District. The plan requires approval by the General Assembly to post a bond measure to voters.

If approved, construction could start in 2012 and be completed by 2013.

URI and RIC each seperately had plans to build nursing schools and will save $10 million by teaming up to build one $60 million facility in the capital city.

URI’s new President, David M. Dooley has stated that he would like to increase the university’s presense in Providence.

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link

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4th Annual Marcia Marker Feld Lecture on Social Justice and the City
SUSTAINABLE URBAN DEVELOPMENT: THE CASE FOR RHODE ISLAND

John Landis, PhD, AICP
Crossways Professor & Chair, Department of City and Regional Planning
University of Pennsylvania

Tuesday April 20th, 2010, 7:00 PM
The University of Rhode Island
Feinstein Providence Campus
80 Washington Street
Providence, Rhode Island

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC – PLEASE DISSEMINATE WIDELY
For directions and other information, uri.edu/prov

RSVP: Rosa Carmona-Barros rbarros@uri.edu 401-277-5239

Professor Landis received his B.S. from MIT and his Ph.D. from Berkeley. He taught at URI during the 1980s, and was very popular with students and colleagues alike. He subsequently taught at Berkeley and Georgia Tech, moving to Penn in 2007. His interests span a variety of urban development topics; his recent research and publications focus on growth management, infill housing, and the geography of urban employment centers.

Together with several generations of Ph.D. students, Professor Landis developed the California Urban Futures series of urban growth models. He is currently engaged in a National Science Foundation-funded project to model, forecast, and develop alternative spatial scenarios of U.S. population and employment patterns and their impacts on travel demand, habitat loss, and water use through 2050. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Planning Association and Housing Policy Debate, and is a member of the Urban Land Institute.

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Gateway Center in 2005, prior to the construction of Waterplace and BCBS, photo by Jef Nickerson

There has been some concern recently that The Big East Conference which was formed in Providence in 1979 was preparing to leave. Probably because Brown University failed to renew their lease in the in the building in the Jewelry District which is to become home to Brown’s Alpert Medical School.

PBN reports today that The Big East will be moving into Gateway Center (aka The AmEx Building). The Gateway Center, located in Capital Center between Providence Place and the train station has been vacant since 2008 after Fidelity completed their move to Smithfield.

According to PBN, The Big East and it’s 32 employees will be using a quarter of the 135,110 square feet. Not a lot of employees, not a fully leased building, but keeping jobs in Rhode Island and bringing more workers to Capital Center is a win, even if a small one. And the news comes just as Providence is suffering a case of March Madness, preparing The Dunk for the NCAA Tournament.

© Greater City: Providence, 2010 | Permalink | 4 comments |

This afternoon Mathewson Street stood in for Philadelphia as a crew filmed a pilot for an ABC program Body of Evidence. It is one of them Medical Examiner solves crimes type shows zzzzzzzzzz… sorry, I fell asleep.

Hopefully it gets picked up though. It would be good for the economy to have another show filmed in the city. ProJo wrote about the show the other day.

Photos by Jef Nickerson

© Greater City: Providence, 2010 | Permalink | 5 comments |

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010, 5:30–8:30pm
AS220, 115 Empire Street, Providence, RI
FREE (buy your own food and drink – it’s cheap)

The March Geek Dinner is a particularly big one for me.

Wednesday evening, my brother Chris and I are going to be giving the first public preview of Lockify. We have developed a new web-based method for safely sharing sensitive information over the Internet.

Lockifying sensitive information before sharing it online protects you and your contacts. Doing so helps guard against interception, copying, archiving, security breaches, data-mining and other rotten stuff.

We’re pretty excited about Lockify, and even more excited to share it with the local geek community, which as always, has been super supportive. We hope you’ll join us.

Please RSVP at Facebook (In the interest of making it more “viral”, we’re doing our RSVPs on Facebook – and while you’re there please join our Facebook group. And if you want to join our very-low-volume email announcement send an email to Jack Templin, with your name and affiliation.)

Providence Geeks

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Interested in being part of a filmed Slumdog Millionaire “Jai Ho” Dance performance? On Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 at 10:00am, the international non-profit Adopt a Doctor will host a filmed “Jai Ho” dance routine at Roger Williams National Park (near the state capitol building in Providence) —modeled after the dance at the finale of the award-winning Slumdog Millionaire movie. Our goal is to promote awareness for our organization’s mission by hosting an engaging, community-building celebration of local diversity. Joan Wiegers, a professional choreographer and director of Dance at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, will coordinate the dance.

We hope to have upwards of 150 people of all ages participate in the dance, and Adopt a Doctor is inviting New England organizations to become co-sponsors. No previous dance experience is required for participation. Please sign up here, or contact Devin Finzer (Phone: 401-421-0606) if you’re interested.

Adopt a Doctor is an international non-profit organization whose mission is to empower doctors in poor countries to work where their services are needed most. Adopt a Doctor provides financial aid and other critical resources to physicians working in poor countries so that they can stay and continue their work.

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