Email this page
Print this page
del.icio.us
diggGrowing Pains
Not enough cabs; no place to park; and street signs, where? As more visitors discover our piece of paradise, we can’t keep up with the deluge.
By Ellen Liberman
Illustration by Mr. Fotheringham
“I still haven’t made the forty dollars it cost me to take the cab out today,” Goris complains. And that isn’t the half of it: The parking valets demand a tip for a fat fare, he says. And in May, the Public Utilities Commission turned down his application
for a taxi plate.
“I had everything ready,” he says. “They said they had enough taxis in Providence, but when this city is moving—really moving—the cabs, it’s not enough.”
A decade ago, it was a dearth of hotel rooms that held the state back from achieving its destiny as a premier convention destination. Today, the metro area boasts 5,000 hotel rooms. Providence alone accounts for nearly half—2,184 rooms with plans underway to add another 600 via four projects in various stages of planning.
“We have entered a period of historic levels of construction of new hotels, and there’s considerable interest in more hotels in Rhode Island,” says David C. DePetrillo, director of tourism for the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation. “We receive calls from companies doing feasibility studies in most areas of the state. They see that Rhode Island still has opportunities for further growth.”
The Renaissance Providence Hotel, perched on Smith Hill, opened in June after a $100 million renovation of the long-derelict Masonic Temple. Its interior aims for what might be de-scribed as stately intimacy. A fruity palate of apricot, cranberry and kiwi warms the marble floors, and silky drapes bring the lobby’s massive Ionic columns down to a more human scale. Every detail of the travel experience has been attended to, from the gleaming bank of treadmills in the exer-cise room to the subtle scent of evergreens wafting from the vents to the posh gloom of the attached Temple bar, the city’s current hot ticket. But it’s hard to maintain the illusion of seamless service when it takes ten minutes to call a guest’s cab.
Now that the state is moving, really moving, into contention for the larger, more lucrative conventions, it is confronting its transportation challenges.
“It has always come in fits and starts. We were always building one thing and catching up with another,” observes Timothy Tyrell, who studied the state’s tourism economy for more than two decades before becoming an associate dean and tourism professor at Arizona State University. “It doesn’t surprise me. One thing that hasn’t changed is tourism as a percentage of the total economy. It’s about five percent, which is significant.”
Rhode Island’s most recent tourism boom began in the early 1980s. Last year, it contributed $5.4 billion to Rhode Island’s gross domestic product. And according to a recent study by the state Department of Labor and Training, the ranks of tourism, leisure and hospitality workers grew by 6.9 percent from 2001 to 2006—more than double the overall private sector growth rate—to 55,252 workers.
The growth is in no small way the result of the regional convention and visitor bureaus’ ability to sell the state’s accommodations and amenities to groups like the American Physical Society, an education and advocacy organization representing the nation’s physicists, which will occupy 6,000 room nights in Providence in 2012. In 2006, Providence and Warwick hotels logged 77,608 room nights in the bookings the convention bureau tracks. In 2007, group room nights totaled 93,927. Next year, the state’s hotels have already booked 57,722, with another 38,675 tentatively scheduled. But the competition for large meetings and events is fierce, says Martha Sheridan, president and chief executive officer of the Providence/Warwick Convention and Visitors Bureau. There are 435 meeting facilities nationwide, and many cities are busy polishing their brands.
But Rhode Island’s most recent successes have also revealed the flaws in the package. Tourism officials acknowledge that the state needs to work on moving visitors around once they get here. They anticipate that the $222.5 million train station by T.F. Green Airport, expected to open in late 2009, will help by linking air travelers and commuters to Providence and Boston via the commuter rail lines. But in the meantime, tourism officials are working out the kinks in smaller but niggling problems: better matching the supply of taxis to the new demand, improving airport shuttle service, beefing up mass transportation, and adding street signage and parking.
As Providence has given suburbanites and out-of-staters more reasons to visit, parking has become even tighter. The last parking study the city undertook was almost ten years ago. It identified a 1,500- to 2,000-space deficit in 1999. City planner Thomas Deller says that Providence is working with the state to develop a parking garage in the lot behind the Garrahy Judicial Complex at Dorrance Plaza, but there aren’t any firm plans for other similar transformations.
“We have to figure out a way to work with developers to make garages happen, and that’s how it’s going to have to be,” Deller says. “If we want to grow and bring jobs and people back to the city, we have
to better use the land we have. What we need to do is allow the potential for future development.”
Then there’s the sudden-onset parking lot that occurs downtown when major events converge at the city’s performance venues. Reil recalls being caught flat-footed one night, unaware that WaterFire and events at the Convention Center and Veteran’s Auditorium would produce instant gridlock.
“It was hell,” he says. “It took the valet forty-five minutes to get around the block. Who’s at the center of communications to allow the community to preplan?”
In July, the state will host the Ironman 70.3, a contest expected to attract 2,000 athletes and their personal cheering squads to Rhode Island for a fifty-six-mile bike ride, a 1.2-mile swim and a 13.1-mile run. Last April, tourism officials billeted race director Steven Meckfessel at the Biltmore, wined and dined him at Hemenway’s and Camille’s, waltzed him from Narragansett to Johnston to tour possible race routes and sealed the deal.
“From that first meeting you get a sense if an event is going to work,” says Meckfessel, who travels internationally to scout out venues for the race. And he was impressed by “the synergy” and the “can-do attitude” he encountered. “In a lot of communities, special events aren’t as warmly received because of their impact on day-to-day life,” he says. “Providence, to me, truly embraces special events as adding flavor to the culture and atmosphere.”
The triathlon will stretch from South County to Johnston, and it will test the state’s ability to coordinate among the various municipalities, tourism officials and state agencies involved, as the venue moves from Roger Wheeler State Beach in Narragansett to the meandering length of Route 102 to the city of Providence.
But, as tourism officials like to point out, it’s a test worth acing, not only because the event is expected to dump $2 million into the state’s economy or because it increases the odds that the event will return, but because making Rhode Island a better place to visit makes it a better place to live. Imagine: a mass transit system that actually makes it practical to leave the car at home. Or street signs in Providence!
“We are fortunate. We are not trying to reinvent ourselves,” says DePetrillo. “Now we have to do what we can to protect those resources and help to nourish the very things that make it great to live here.”
