Demo at the old Prov police station

You might recall how I wrote back on July 13 that demolition at Providence's old police station was imminent. Well, it has started. Frank Mullin was there yesterday to capture some of the images:

Dan Barbarisi reports on the story today:

PROVIDENCE — The Procaccianti Group started demolition at the former police and fire station in LaSalle Square yesterday morning, mere moments after an appeal by a neighborhood group was dismissed by the city’s Building Board.

Just after 11 a.m., wrecking balls started to bash in the west face of the building, which served as the city’s police and fire headquarters from 1938 to 2002. It will be demolished over the course of two months.

The Cranston developer had received emergency demolition permits last week to demolish the vacant station and replace it with a parking lot, after the city’s building official found that it would be a public safety hazard to leave the building standing.

. . . .

The appeal by the West Broadway Neighborhood Association argued that while the interior may look bad, the building is in no imminent danger of collapse. Procaccianti has also stated that exterior limestone panels may pop off and injure passersby; the appeal also discounts this danger.

But in the end, it did not matter how structurally sound the building was: the board determined that because the neighborhood association was not directly affected by the demolition, and was not an abutter within 200 feet of the property, it was not capable of halting the demolition with an appeal.

Besides concern about replacing a structure, even temporarily, with yet another downtown surface parking lot, there's a case to be made for the place of this building in the city's history. According to the ProJo account, "Procaccianti still intends to retain architecturally significant elements of the building’s façade and incorporate them into any new building." It's hard to know whether this is more style or substance, but the Cicilline administration has clearly cast its lot with the developer on this one.