PROVIDENCE — Brown University announced yesterday that it will buy seven buildings in the city’s Jewelry District for future expansion of the university’s life science and medical programs.

The purchase, part of Brown’s plan to expand beyond College Hill, is one of the most expensive in the university’s history, according to Brown President Ruth J. Simmons.

In an e-mail to the Brown community, Simmons said the buildings will provide Brown with 232,000 square feet, a 400-car parking garage and other parking space in downtown Providence.

The university did not disclose the purchase price, saying it had agreed with seller Belvoir Properties to wait until the sale goes through early next year. A commercial real-estate appraiser, Thomas O. Sweeney, estimated the properties are worth between $40 million and $50 million.

10 Davol Square

The prospective acquisition means that another large chunk of taxable property will gradually be peeled away from the municipal tax base because property devoted to academic purposes is tax-exempt. The loss of property that is turned to tax-exempt purposes has long been a sore point for the fiscally challenged city.

Mayor David N. Cicilline declined to be interviewed about the announcement but issued a statement saying that the city Department of Planning and Development is completing an analysis of the acquisition and that he will be discussing it with Brown. “It would be premature to speculate about the future use of that property,” he said.

Brown officials said the buildings will be used for the life sciences and medical research, but that more exact plans for the space and a more precise timeline for their use are still unclear.

339 Eddy St.

“While the additional properties that we intend to purchase are not immediately available for University programs, and their ultimate uses are yet to be determined, this strategic investment will provide the University with some of the needed flexibility as we continue to plan for expansion in the years ahead,” Simmons wrote in the letter.

The properties include: 1 and 10 Davol Square; 339 and 349 Eddy St.; and 196, 222 and 233 Richmond St.

Brown officials said the buildings currently house offices and retail businesses and that the university will honor those leases.

349 Eddy St.

“It will be phased in and will start slowly,” Richard Spies, a senior adviser to Simmons, said of Brown’s plans to take over the properties. “We may be renewing most or perhaps all the leases.”

The announcement follows two other recent off-campus purchases by Brown. In 2004, the university bought the former Speidel building at 70 Ship St. in the Jewelry District for $14.6 million and now uses it as the university’s Laboratories for Molecular Medicine. Brown bought the Old Stone Square building at 121 South Main St. for $31.5 million last year to house its public health program, which the university hopes to expand to a school of public health.

Brown agreed to pay full property tax on the Old Stone Square building for five years, which was about $700,000 last year. Then Brown will pay 66.7 percent of the property tax for years 6 through 10, and 33.3 percent of the property tax for years 11 through 15, before coming off the tax rolls at the end of 15 years. Simmons said a similar payment plan will apply to the new purchases.

Davol Rubber Co., at One Davol Square, Providence, is seen in the rear in this file photo from 1960, with 10 Davol Square in the foreground.

JOURNAL FILE PHOTO

Under an historic three-year-old deal, Brown, Providence College, Johnson & Wales University and the Rhode Island School of Design make payments to the city in lieu of property taxes. Brown pays the city about $1.4 million a year under that voluntary compact.

Cicilline noted in his statement that the compact, which he negotiated, will keep any property that Brown purchases on the municipal tax roll for a minimum of 15 years. As in the Old Stone Square arrangement, which was covered by the deal, the tax paid on newly acquired properties will decline in stages during the 15 years.

Brown is fast outgrowing its base on College Hill and needs to expand into downtown Providence to accommodate future growth, particularly in the life sciences and medicine, say university officials. Last year, Spies said Brown wanted to expand by 500,000 to 700,000 square feet. The seven Jewelry District buildings, combined with 121 Main St., bring Brown’s total close to 400,000 square feet of additional space.

“While there still is room to expand on College Hill on properties that Brown owns, we recognize that like most research universities, we will grow over time, our liberal arts will grow, our sciences will grow, our medical school will grow,” said Rebecca Barnes, Brown’s director of strategic growth.

Expansion into downtown also benefits the wider community, particularly as Rhode Island strives to secure its foothold in biomedicine and biotechnology, Brown officials say.

“As we were looking for space off campus, we have been looking at what the city and state are saying about their goals for economic development,” Barnes said.

“The reason we are buying in the Jewelry District is that this is an area that both the mayor and the state are interested in seeing investment in, so it becomes a mixed-use urban neighborhood,” Barnes said.

The Jewelry District has long been perceived as a distinct neighborhood, a mix of residential and commercial uses, visually and physically separated from downtown by Route 195. The 195 relocation project is expected to erase that distinction and allow downtown to spread to the south, just as it spread to the north and west in Capital Center.

The Route 195 relocation project will open up 35 to 45 acres to be developed in future years, another potential area for expansion and economic development by Brown and others. Johnson & Wales University also covets that area.

“It’s true that the relocation of I-195 makes the Jewelry District a much more desirable place to invest,” Barnes said.

“It will also make the walking connections between College Hill, downtown and the hospitals much easier.”

The city already is moving to capitalize on the anticipated new acreage, planning a 6-acre park on one side of the Providence River and a 2-acre park on the other, to be connected by a pedestrian bridge. The winner of a waterfront park design competition is scheduled to be announced Monday.

Another expected major component of redevelopment in the immediate area is the planned Dynamo House at Providence Point. The development company Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse would like to do a $139-million rehabilitation of the former South Street electricity plant to house Heritage Harbor Museum, a hotel, restaurant and offices.