Capitol Cove, next to the Moshassuck River in downtown Providence

Photo by David Brussat

A SENSE of resignation greets the lease of the Capitol Cove condos to Johnson & Wales University as dorms. The three-year lease has an option to renew for two more. It spotlights growing trouble for the Providence housing market. Buyers for the 94 units lurk behind a horizon that sits, in the estimation of its owner, no fewer than three years in the future. Better to fill the place with students than to let it sit empty. And better, also, for JWU to lease it, keeping it on the tax rolls, instead of buying it (as it yet could do). Still, the news makes it more difficult to be upbeat about the local economy.

And when buyers do finally tiptoe back into the market, will they seek a discount for units occupied by collegians? Surely not. The project will be renovated, of course. A better question might be what discount will be demanded for its ugliness. That question looms over Capitol Cove and the rest of Capital Center. It is the 800-pound gorilla that has been sitting politely in the city’s parlor for years. It has been ignored, but it’s not going away, and it is definitely not unrelated to the local economy.

Just weeks before going dormo, developer Robert Roth noted that while other condo projects in the Capital Center district were going rental, “what sets Capitol Cove apart is the determined and optimistic approach we’ve taken to keep the development for sales only, without offering any units for rent.”

But observers don’t need long memories to recall that a year after it was initially proposed in 2002, its units were described by Roth as rental, expected to fetch $1,700 to $2,700 a month, according to a Nov. 14, 2003, Journal article by Greg Smith.

Most undergrads are not fussy about the look of where their college administrators see fit to house them. Capitol Cove must seem for them just a couple of steps shy of paradise. Although the dorm is a fair trek from the school’s main campus on Weybosset Street, a lush bar scene hovers just a block away on North Main Street. For some hearty tipplers, the crawl home will traverse some of the choicest grass in town — Roger Williams National Memorial. (The young scholars may like to know that this park, designed by Norman Isham, is the 20th smallest National Park in America.) Still, they must strive to avoid a tumble into the Moshassuck River.

But condo buyers forking out up to $500,000 for their units might care about what the building looks like. A place they buy must be more attractive than a place they rent. After all, what they buy reflects their concept of who they are. To be sure, once they move in, condo owners primarily look from rather than at their habitation. Their view from it may trump others’ view of it. And yet, one always has the look of one’s home in the mind’s eye, and that look must be to some degree either pleasing or displeasing.

Recall that when this project was first brought to the Capital Center Commission, it looked pleasant in a traditional brick-and-gables sort of a way. Modernists on the design-review panel urged the developer’s architect (at first Elkus/Manfredi of Boston, then HDS Architecture of Watertown, Mass.) to replace some of its traditional features with a contemporary look. Similar advice to ax tradition from the original Westin Hotel tower was rejected during its design-review process in the early ’90s. But Roth had his architect follow the panel’s poor advice.

Capitol Cove reminds me of the produce terminal demolished last year amid regret for its historical if not its aesthetic qualities. Capital Cove’s roof is lined with boxy shed dormers. Its main façades of red and beige brick, facing east and west and rising six stories, are each interrupted by six twin rectangular bays of steel that rise to the fourth story. Along with the boxy dormers, the bays demonstrate how completely an otherwise attractive building can be ruined by clunky modernist features.

I can imagine people wanting to buy a unit in a place that, whatever its appearance, faces either the State House (though trains run between them) or a park. But I am sure that the look of Capitol Cove had already sapped its allure in the condo market before it was leased to JWU. The same is true for the two ridiculous towers of Waterplace Luxury Condominiums, which were also rumored to be slated for dormitories. Many of the towers’ units have views that poke buyers in the eye — either the GTECH building that mars Waterplace or the new Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Rhode Island headquarters, which blocks the State House. The economy may be killing these projects, but the architecture is not helping.

Ugliness and sterility of design add to the difficulty of selling places, especially when the economy is down. Beauty makes it easier to sell places whether the economy is weak or strong. This is not rocket science. Why is it so hard to grasp even in a city with a heritage of beautiful architecture to build on? A Capital Center with a traditional look could have boosted the economy. Instead, ugliness drags it down. By spurning an opportunity for the spectacular, Providence has embraced a longer, deeper recession. Architects, developers and civic leaders in the “Not Very Creative Capital” share much blame for helping the global crisis sink the local economy.

David Brussat is a member of The Journal’s editorial board ( dbrussat@projo.com). His projo.com blog is called Architecture Here and There.