WaterFire volunteers carry torches for United Way last Saturday evening at Waterplace.

Photo by David Brussat

HEAT may be why Providence is so hot this summer. Or not. No matter. The city’s so hot it’s downright cool.

Nineteen years ago, Newsweek declared Providence one of America’s “hot” cities. That was before Waterplace, Providence Place, the Convention Center and four new hotels — before WaterFire, before Sound Session, before AS220, before the advent of much that is hot about Providence today.

In 1989, the city’s renaissance was little more than a murmur. No one had yet confused the term Downcity with downtown. The digging hadn’t yet begun on the Rhode Island Convention Center, its hotel, the Capital Center or River Relocation. Providence Place was a will o’ the wisp. Projects were moving — but only in committee. The convention center did not open until 1993. Waterplace Park was not completed until 1994. The mall opened in 1999.

In 1989, on a Saturday afternoon in summer, you could have shot a cannonball up Westminster Street (newly reopened to traffic and jazzed up elegantly by Mayor Paolino) and not hit a car, let alone a soul. That’s how Mayor Cianci enjoyed describing the lassitude of Providence before his first term 15 years prior. The Outlet, which burned in 1986, was not demolished until 1989; Johnson & Wales’s new quad did not get its glorious gatehouse until 1994. Shoppers who did not manage to avoid Providence altogether shopped at the Arcade by day and, by night, Davol Square — which was already in decline, and closed in 1991. Downtown was Deadsville, especially in summer. Most students and many residents left town. Only the down-and-outers felt the heat.

Indeed, a lot of WaterFires have passed under the bridge since 1989 (234 to be exact, starting in 1994). Two decades are nothing to sniff at — and yet few towns in America have changed as monumentally as Providence, and largely without sacrificing its good looks. This city may be too hot not to cool down, but even with a little help from our friend the economy it seems to be taking its time. With all the activity, you wouldn’t know there’s a recession.

Three new condo towers are virtually complete around Waterplace, where yet another girdered edifice — an office building — reaches for the sky. Yet another hotel is on the rise in the Financial District, but other projects, such as the One Ten, and the Sierra Suites in the Downcity district of downtown, seem to have stalled. Developers rarely hold press conferences to announce the demise of projects.

It’s in the fun people are having at the level of the street where the “hot” of Providence has got too cool for words. (Using hot and cool as synonyms will not win me any awards from the literary guild!)

Last weekend, the grungy men in tattered clothes who gathered at the skating rink in Kennedy Plaza sought to determine who had facial hair most reminiscent of the man on the horse nearby, Gen. Ambrose Burnside (1824-81), whose hirsuitical creativity gave us the word sideburns. The event was hosted by a new festival — the Indie Arts Fest. I’d figured this was a recessionary version of the Rhode Island International Film Festival, but in fact it is new. The old one, featuring independent films from around the world, is scheduled for Aug. 5-10.

Last Thursday, high-school basketball was played in the rink. The matches are part of a city effort to fill Burnside Park with sports such as roller derby, not to mention concerts, farmers’ markets, art exhibits, social-activist booths and other entertainment (everything’s somebody’s sort of thing) throughout the summer and beyond. So far it is working. Foot races, bike races, triathlons and that sort of thing continue to snarl traffic for fun and fitness’s sake.

The latest WaterFire featured a festival of torches (Prometheia) around Waterplace, hosted by downtown restaurants and hotels, in honor of the United Way. The week before was the fifth Sound Session, sponsored by the Providence Black Repertory Company, with its annual parade and block party. What a blast! A new tradition! AS220, on Empire, offers poetry slams and other offbeat artistic events.

Gallery Night continues to animate downtown on the third Thursday of every month. Movies on the Block, shown against a wall outside tazza at Westminster and Union, continue free each Thursday; this week, the movie will be Hitchcock’s The Birds. Restaurant “week” was two weeks this year. One participant was Aspire, at the Hotel Providence. The successor to L’Epicureo, Aspire’s owners hope to fill tiny Grace Park with energy, which I hope will flow up and down Westminster. Most of the shops on the street have free events, wine-tastings at Eno, readings at Symposium Books, and more.

Of course, cannonballs will be coming my way for leaving out this or that. There’s just too much to put in one column. Much of it is free. The beauty and walkability of the city are free. Inventing ridiculous names for the new modernist buildings downtown is free. Providence is shrugging off a sustained assault of the uglies, and so shrugging off a recession may be possible, too. Again, this city may be too hot not to cool down, but it hasn’t happened yet.

David Brussat is a member of The Journal’s editorial board ( dbrussat@projo.com).