PAWTUCKET DOWNTOWN DESIGN PLAN FINAL ... - VHB.com

PROBLEM The current regulatory process relies on special use permits and
variances.
CONCEPT The final project, Downtown Guidance, cleans up zoning and land
use issues to encourage the pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use development
the city wants and discourage the car-dominated, low density it doesn’t. This
concept assists the city in changing its current regulations to offer mixed use
and multi-tenant commercial by right, removing parking requirements for the
Commercial Downtown District, reduces allowable maximum height restrictions
in downtown and offers development guidelines to support appropriate and
compatible urban design and architecture.
The PDDP concepts are broad in ambition, but detailed and organized
into a list of projects that address short, medium and long-term phase
implementation. While each project can be completed individually, they
also add up to a bigger more productive vision and will require coordination
between local and state level agencies, continued political and community
support, and funding from federal, state and local levels.
LANDSCAPE PLAN
Inevitably, the Pawtucket Downtown Design Plan is not really a single “plan” so
much as a set of ongoing projects. These efforts may not fix everything about
downtown, but they will give the city a solid infrastructural base that provides
healthy and clear ways to get around by allowing the city to leverage its many
strengths. Pawtucket is what so many places are not — a small, walkable
urban center filled with new and old buildings, neighborhoods of people from
all over the world, hardy entrepreneurs, and accessible city government. At just
one corner, Fountain and Exchange streets, you can find a world-class theater,
a silkscreen company, a high school, a renovated mill full of design companies,
a historic armory, and, just across the adjacent river full of wildlife, you reach
City Hall, a post office, a public library, and a historic site soon to be the center
of a new National Park. In developing the downtown plan, the PDDP team
found that the best design direction was simply to make a place evident to
itself and others.
BRIDGE PARK EAST
FINAL REPORT
PDDP final report
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