The corner of Thayer and Meeting streets in the business district is near the Avon Theater, a College Hill institution.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

The entrance to a house at 2 George St., on the corner of Benefit. Below, the Unitarian Church.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

College Hill, home to Benefit Street and much of Providence’s most beautiful historic architecture, is also home to Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. But, along with the impressive city views and the proximity to downtown, neighborhood leaders say they face considerable pressure from their powerful, influential and ever-expanding institutional neighbors. And they wish the city administration were more proactive in balancing the needs of the institutions and residents.

For those reasons, many residents were “relieved” by Brown’s recently announced decision to expand downtown, in the Jewelry District, said Tom Goddard, past president of the College Hill Neighborhood Association.

“One of the significant issues for the College Hill neighborhood is the expansion of the institutions, Brown and RISD; there’s no getting around that,” Goddard said. “… [Brown] is becoming so successful that they simply have run out of space on College Hill. It looks as though their large biotech programs are moving downtown.”

The other immediate issue concerning College Hill is the Thayer Street bar and nightclub area, Goddard said. When he was growing up, Thayer Street was a neighborhood shopping district, but the noticeable increase in nightlife, with its attendant noise and rowdy behaviors after hours, is not appreciated by residents who live near those businesses, Goddard said.

College Hill is “the urban, city piece of the East Side,” said Sharon Steele, owner of The Sharon Steele Group, a real estate agency on the East Side. “Everything else is fairly suburban. If you’re a city dweller, you can walk to the downtown, walk to restaurants. … It’s the Manhattan, Boston walker mentality. It’s a very different mindset.”

Steele has been in the real estate business on the East Side for 26 years. She said it’s true that expansions by Brown and RISD have brought more students to the neighborhood, and more challenges, but added that “College Hill is really a neighborhood unto itself. [Buyers] want to be on College Hill or they don’t want to be there. Either you are an urban person, or you’re not.”

“The market is still very good. It’s very stable,” Steele said. She said there were only 12 single-family houses on the market in College Hill the first week of this month, ranging in price from $499,900 to $3.8 million. There was one house that was “pending,” or under contract to be sold soon. From July 1 to Nov. 1, 10 houses in the neighborhood were sold, ranging in price from $370,000 to $1.2 million.

Steele said the houses available for sale now have an average of 145 days on the market, but if one house that’s been on the market for close to 400 days is removed from the equation, the average is 90 days on the market. In the sold group, the average time on the market is 33 days, she said. “For things that are priced where they belong, they come on and they go,” Steele said. “There is no such thing as house that can’t sell; it is a house with the wrong price.”

“The condo story is a little different,” Steele said. Inventory, at 46 condominiums, is much higher than usual, probably due to the large number of condo conversions of formerly single-family houses in recent years, she said. The 46 condos are priced from $219,900 to $1.35 million, with 133 average days on the market. That is “a good bit of inventory, and many of those are simply the wrong price,” Steele said.

The six condos that are in “pending” sale status have an average of 75 days on the market. “Again, if it’s priced where it belongs, it doesn’t stick around,” Steele said. The 24 College Hill condos that sold between July 1 and Nov. 1 ranged in price from $152,000 [for a studio] to $622,000.

Goddard still works on College Hill, but moved to Newport several years ago. A move to the coast was always in the grand plan, Goddard said, but was moved up by a few years because of an increase in some of the less desirable aspects of urban life. “The neighborhood has changed,” he said.

Goddard and others who have been active in the College Hill Neighborhood Association said the city needs to do more to help College Hill retain its residential and historic character.

“They’re letting the market rule; they’re taking a hands-off attitude towards it … basically, they don’t care. They think that Brown and RISD offer more to the city” than residents, Goddard said. “If you’re a politician, it doesn’t pay to get into a fight with Brown,” one College Hill resident said. But Goddard pointed out that the 02906 zip code — the East Side — is the heart of the city’s residential tax base.

Goddard said the city needs to more actively plan and direct development, and should be offering disincentives and incentives for growth in certain areas.

“Providence has this phenomenal potential,” he said, “but people are sleepwalking.”

Steele pointed out that “the diversity of the East Side” is another of the benefits offered by the College Hill neighborhood. “We are a heterogeneous market; we have singles, couples, we have same-sex couples, academicians, [and] childless couples,” she said.

“We can also walk to cultural events and hear the Rhode Island Philharmonic; you can see the Festival Ballet. … We’ve really, really come into our own,” Steele said. “We can compete with all the cities in the Northeast corridor.”