10:00 AM EDT on Sunday, April 24, 2005

BY BILL VAN SICLEN
Journal Arts Writer

PROVIDENCE -- It's 10 a.m. on a sunny spring morning and sculptor Howie Sneider is just where he wants to be: inside a dingy industrial building in Olneyville showing a group of mostly fiftysomething men how to cut steel.

"First, you wait until the metal starts puddling," he explains, as sparks fly from the tip of his acetylene torch. "Then, once the puddle forms, you increase the oxygen flow, which basically pushes the molten steel out of the way."

A few seconds later, a hunk of quarter-inch-thick steel clatters to the ground. The sound brings gasps of approval from Sneider's students, most of whom seem surprised by how easily the torch's flame sliced through the metal.

"It's just like cutting butter!" exclaims one onlooker.

"Man, that's fast!" adds another.

Welcome to another day at The Steel Yard, a unique mix of trade school, art academy and cultural melting pot on the fringes of downtown. Founded by a pair of idealistic young artists, one of whom belongs to the fabled Rockefeller clan, The Steel Yard is part of a cluster of small arts and community organizations that is transforming the former Providence Steel and Iron Co. plant at 27 Sims Ave.

"It really is a pretty unique concept," says Steel Yard executive director Peter Eiermann. "Basically, we're using an old industrial facility to teach industrial arts like welding, blacksmithing and metal-casting to a new generation."

Though it began offering classes nearly two years ago, the pace of activity at The Steel Yard has increased dramatically in recent months.

In addition to welding and metalsmithing, the Steel Yard now offers courses in sculpture, jewelry-making and ceramics. It also rents out its facilities, including a well-stocked metal shop and a ceramics studio, to local artists.

Another initiative, the Youth Enrichment Partnerships, makes The Steel Yard's facilities and expertise available to local high school students.

"If there's one theme that runs through everything we do, it's the value of sharing information and ideas," says Eiermann, who gave up fast-track technology job to join The Steel Yard in 2002. "By bringing together people with different talents and viewpoints and backgrounds, we think we can be a resource not just for the local arts community but for the whole city."

This month also marks The Steel Yard's first big fundraising effort.

Journal photo / Andrew Dickerman

At The Steel Yard studios in Providence, Mairin Jerome welds a steel rod for a project as part of her studies at Brown University.

Dubbed The Steel Yard Spring Gala, the event takes place Saturday from 7 to 11 p.m. The $50 admission price includes food, entertainment and demonstrations by Steel Yard artists and instructors. (For more information, call 401-273-7101 or visit www.thesteelyard.org on the Web.)

"For the most part, we've been keeping a low profile," Eiermann says. "There were a lot of issues related to buying the property and getting the educational programs up and running. Now we're ready to ramp things up."

But ramp up to what? Even The Steel Yard's twentysomething co-founders, Nick Bauta and Clay Rockefeller, aren't quite sure what they've created.

Is it a school of industrial arts -- a kind of workingman's Rhode Island School of Design? Is it a workshop for professional artists? Is it a small-business incubator catering to the so-called "creative economy" of artists, educators and entrepreneurs? Or is it all of the above?

"Right now, we're still something of a work in progress," says Rockefeller, an earnest young man whose sartorial tastes run more to faded jeans and T-shirts than fancy suits and ties. "Sometimes that's a problem, especially when you're asking a bank to write you a check.

"But considering how far we've come in a couple of years, I don't think keeping our options open is necessarily a bad thing."

Complicated financing

Another source of confusion is the complicated financing deal that allowed Bauta and Rockefeller to buy the Sims Avenue site.

Officially, it belongs to Milhaus LLC, a commercial real estate partnership that paid $1.4 million for the 2.9-acre property in 2002. Milhaus, in turn, rents space to The Steel Yard, which is run by a non-profit organization called the Woonasquatucket Valley Community Build, or WVCB.

"It's really very simple," Rockefeller says with a laugh. "Actually, if we had it to do all over again, we'd probably go completely non-profit. Having two different sides to a project like this is a bit of a headache."

At the same time, Bauta and Rockefeller know what they don't want: another Eagle Square-style development that drives out artists and small businesses to make way for upscale retail and residential projects.

Indeed, it was the loss of Fort Thunder, a legendary underground arts space not far from The Steel Yard, and the threatened loss of other old mill buildings in the Eagle Square area that launched a number of artist-led development projects. In addition to The Steel Yard, the list includes its next-door neighbor, Monohasset Mill, as well as the Rau Fastener Building in Elmwood and the former Dreyfus Hotel downtown. (See accompanying story for more on these projects.)

"One of the things Eagle Square showed us was how vulnerable these old industrial buildings were," Rockefeller says. "One day you could have this very vibrant community of artists and small businesses. The next day you could have a new owner who wanted to tear everything down and build a shopping mall."

Time to buy

After watching just such a fate befall Fort Thunder, Bauta, Rockefeller and other artists began looking for ways to buy their own buildings.

Their first success was Monohasset Mill, a rambling brick factory building at Eagle Street and Kinsley Avenue. Built in 1886, the former Armington & Sims Manufacturing plant now houses 37 residential lofts ranging from 1,000 to 2,500 square feet.

Prices start at $125,000 -- low for the Providence market.

"That was sort of our test run," says Rockefeller, a partner in Monohasset. "It showed us some of the challenges of doing a mill-conversion project -- things like dealing with banks and city inspectors and so on. But it also showed us that if we worked hard and had a good plan, people would listen."

During negotiations for Monohasset, Rockefeller began eyeing the adjacent Providence Steel property, then in a semi-derelict state. Fortunately, both Bauta and Rockefeller are self-described "metalheads" -- sculptors who use drills, torches and other metalworking tools in their work.

For them, discovering the rusted remains of one of Providence's oldest and largest steel-fabricating plants was like winning the lottery.

"It was heaven," Rockefeller says. "To walk through the shop and see all the machinery still in place, then to go outside and see the old booms and hoists out in the yard was fantastic. We were like kids at Christmas."

Disaster zone

But the site also posed some problems.

Unlike Monohasset Mill, where conversion to live/work lofts had been relatively easy, the Providence Steel property is dominated by small shed-like buildings scattered around an open workyard. Trying to duplicate the residential formula that had worked at Monohasset simply wouldn't work.

A potentially more serious problem was the soil, which had been badly polluted during decades of industrial production.

"Basically, the whole place was an environmental disaster zone," Rockefeller says. "The big problem was lead, but there were plenty of other bad things like oil, solvents, you name it. I mean, the place had been an active steel yard for more than a century -- long before there were any environmental controls."

Ultimately, Bauta and Rockefeller struck a deal with property owner William E. King. King agreed to sell Providence Steel for below market value, while Millhaus LLC accepted responsibility for cleaning up the site.

Asked how cleanup efforts are going, Rockefeller cites a number of moves taken in consultation with Soil Solutions, a Portland, Ore., company that specializes in brownfields cleanup. Two years ago, for example, more than 600 tons of the most contaminated soil were excavated and carted off to a secure landfill.

Plans are also underway to "cap" the entire site with fresh topsoil.

"It's been a long process, but it's worth it," Rockefeller says.

Making the best of it

Meanwhile, Providence Steel's new owners have tried to make the best of their site's unusual layout. Entering the property from Sims Avenue, for example, takes you past a two-story brick building that once housed the plant's office and adminstrative staff. Now it's home to several arts-related businesses, including Truth Box, an architecture firm, and Tellart, a Web and IT design company. Another small business, Recycle-A-Bike, has started renting space in another building.

The property has also become a popular staging area for local artists and arts groups.

Among the groups listed on The Steel Yard's Web site are NOD (short for the Non-Objective Design Studio) and PIPS (short for the Providence Initiative for Psychogeographic Studies). NOD's blurb describes it as "a collaborative of artists [who] reuse and repurpose materials."

PIPS, meanwhile, organizes "urban interventions," including one last year in which artists dressed in thrift-shop outfits staged an impromptu "fashion show" at Providence Place mall. The group also sponsors an annual conference and art exhibit called Provflux. (For more information on PIPS and Provflux, visit www.pipsworks.com.)

Another initiative, an artist-run greenhouse called the Urban Agriculture Unit, occupies the north side of the property, facing Kinsley Avenue.

Still, the bulk of activity at the site revolves around The Steel Yard. Housed in a long hangar-like building that once served as Providence Steel's main workshop, it seems like the perfect setting for classes in the industrial arts -- grimy, gritty and stocked with everything from potters' wheels to blacksmiths' anvils.

"One of the great things about this place is that it hasn't been completely cleaned and sanitized," says Rockefeller. "It's the kind of place that really makes you want to get your hands dirty."