A model showcases the planned conversion of a former power plant into Dynamo House, a residential space and museum. Some of the planned stages of development had to be scaled back because of changes in historic tax credits.

The Providence Journal / Andrew Dickerman

Rhode Islanders may think it odd that an old power plant in Providence would be turned into a hotel and museum.

Think again.

The plan to convert the former South Street Station, an electricity-generating plant once owned by the Narragansett Electric Co., into Dynamo House, a mixed-use project, is part of a national trend.

Developers have taken an interest in reusing these large-scale industrial relics, even if converting them may require cleaning soil, adding floors and removing smokestacks.

Seth Handy, a director with Struever Brothers, Eccles & Rouse, said the impressive architectural scale of such buildings was originally intended to persuade skeptical customers that newfangled electricity could be trusted.

Struever is converting the plant in Providence. According to the plans, the $150-million project, when completed by 2010, will have 340,000 square feet with seven floors and include a Smithsonian-affiliated museum. There will also be a hotel and a conference facility. The relocation of nearby Route 195 and the construction of a one-acre parking lot are predicted to support housing development there as well as in the nearby jewelry district.

“This is a critically important piece of the area’s improvement,” Handy said.

But a great deal has to happen before the full vision becomes reality.

The General Assembly recently scaled back the historic tax-credit program to plug the deficit in the state budget. This change may cause Streuver to cut back on some of the later development stages of the Dynamo House project, now under construction.

“Dynamo House is not going away,” said William Struever, company president. “There is potential that there will have to be some reductions in scope.”

Other conversions are moving forward in other parts of the country.

The PowerHouse Condominium, at 50-09 Second St. in Long Island City, Queens, for example, will have 447 units on the site of a structure designed by McKim, Mead & White in 1909 to provide electricity for trains.

The $200-million project, which is being developed by Brooklyn-based CGS Developers and Zigmond Brach, is going up in three phases. The first, to be completed in August, offers 177 units, from 500-square-foot studios to 1,500-square-foot three-bedrooms with walnut floors and washer and dryer hookups. They are priced from $500,000 to $2 million, and 30 percent have sold since October, said Cheskel Schwimmer, a CGS principal.

These first apartments are also the only ones to be contained in actual sections of the former plant, which retained its tall arched windows but lost its four 275-foot chimneys. It came close to losing a lot more than that. The original proposal was to raze it, which would have saved $40 million. But the community outcry forced Schwimmer to alter his plans, he said. Preserving at least some of the building may work to his advantage.

“People like history and want to live in historic businesses,” he said. The restoration might also spur a neighborhood revitalization, as is hoped in Jersey City, which has already coined the name Powerhouse Arts District in honor of a plant yet to be converted on Washington Boulevard and First Street.

First, an attached substation for the subway needs to be relocated, a four-year process that will begin this month, according to Robert Antonicello, the executive director of the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency. His group also recently hired the architecture firm Beyer Blinder Belle as part of a $3.2-million effort to stabilize the water-damaged 1908 structure, Antonicello said.

By 2013, the plant is to have 180,000 square feet with five floors, filled with galleries, restaurants and offices, under a $90-million plan from the Cordish Co., a developer that has transformed plants in Baltimore, where it is based, and Richmond, Va. The progress in Jersey City may be welcome news to the Athena Group, a developer that has three residential projects at various stages of development nearby. The first, which has been completed, is A Condominiums, with 35 stories and 250 units –– from 515-square-foot one-bedrooms to 1,366-square-foot two-bedrooms –– priced from $300,000 to $1.2 million. Ninety percent have sold since November 2006, said Eugene Cordano, an agent at Halstead Property. The fate is less certain for an 80,000-square-foot power plant on the Hudson River, in the Glenwood section of Yonkers. The REMI Cos. of Manhattan had planned to build 400 units there until a few weeks ago, when talks fell apart with the seller, Kenneth Capolino, a contractor based in White Plains, said Erik A. Kaiser, REMI’s chief executive.

With New York Times reports