Communications director Ralph Izzi, left, and project manager Ken Burke, Procaccianti representatives, tour the former Police and Fire Headquarters yesterday. The developer will seek a demolition permit Tuesday.

The Providence Journal / Andrew Dickerman Andrew Dickerman

PROVIDENCE — The Procaccianti Group will ask the Zoning Board of Review on Tuesday for permission to knock down the old Police and Fire Headquarters in La Salle Square, saying that the old public safety building has deteriorated to the point where it is now a public safety hazard.

The site would be used as a surface parking lot until Procaccianti begins work on a mixed-use office tower with street-level restaurant and retail shops that it envisions there.

Procaccianti has been seeking to tear down the building for the better part of a year, but has been halted by the efforts of preservationists and neighborhood groups, who see the site as architecturally significant.

But this time, the Cranston developer will have city support, after acting Building Official Kerry Anderson inspected the building June 29, and found it to be in a state of “gross deterioration.”

Anderson ordered that Procaccianti “obtain the required permits and demolish the structure immediately,” citing significant water damage, a leaking roof, mortar joints cracking on the brick façade, and missing pieces of limestone on the exterior that reveal disintegrating steel anchors.

But the Providence Preservation Society and the West Broadway Neighborhood Association have also had their own experts, including Rhode Island School of Design architecture Prof. Wilbur Yoder, examine the site, and don’t believe it to be in any imminent danger of collapse.

“We think that this should be heard before the [Downcity Design Review Commission] before any action is taken, because the building is structurally sound,” said Kari Lang, executive director of the WBNA.

“The inside is pretty awful, but nobody’s saying that that needs to be saved. We just need to make sure that people can’t get in there; then it seems like a pretty safe situation,” she said.

Procaccianti has long said that the building, erected in 1938, attracts vandals and the homeless, is infested with rats, and is an accident waiting to happen.

The inside of the building looks like a scene from a disaster movie, with light fixtures hanging from the ceiling, graffiti on the walls, walls and ceilings ripped out, and furniture piled into corners. Some is the result of vandalism, some the result of asbestos-removal work that has been under way for six months and recently concluded.

Procaccianti’s structural engineer, David Odeh of Odeh Engineers Inc., agreed that the building was not in imminent danger of collapse. But he said that the building exhibited all the signs of a site in long-term decline, and rapidly worsening.

“This is the first stage. This is how things go wrong,” Odeh said. “It’s the long-term performance of the building that’s in doubt.”

He said the steel anchors were corroding, requiring additional supports to be installed, and that the moisture trapped in the walls was leading to chunks of limestone breaking and popping out, raising the possibility that whole limestone panels could start falling off the sides of the building.

Procaccianti spokesman Ralph V. Izzi Jr. said that after a series of meetings with the neighborhood groups, facilitated by Mayor David N. Cicilline, the two sides have come to some agreement on the difficult state of the building. As part of demolition, Procaccianti has agreed to retain some of the stylistic elements of the outer façade, removing them for now and incorporating them in a new building. That process has begun but will take some time, according to project superintendent Steve Perfetto.

The developer must also clean and seal five underground storage tanks beneath the complex.

Demolition would cost $1.2 million, and could take two to three months after approval is granted.

The details of what is planned are uncertain, as is the timetable. The most recently announced plans would include two towers: one a four-story parking garage and the other a roughly 20-story building with 325,000 to 350,000 square feet of office space separated from the parking garage by a glass-roofed retail and restaurant promenade.

The building would have two levels of underground parking, for a total of 440 spaces, nearly all dedicated to the building. It would cost more than $150 million and would take 2½ years to complete from the time building permits were issued.

Until it starts construction, Procaccianti plans to operate a surface parking lot at the site.

That outcome is not what the WBNA wants, even in the short term, Lang said,

“We certainly do not support a surface parking lot there; there’s plenty of surface parking lots downtown, and we don’t need another one,” she said.

Procaccianti envisions that the office tower would form the cornerstone of a “power block” centered on La Salle Square that would include the Procaccianti-owned Hilton Hotel across the street and retail development and a parking garage at the vacant John E. Fogarty Memorial Building, on Fountain Street. Last week, the developer received approval from the Downcity Design Review Commission to demolish the Fogarty Building, pending the issuance of building permits for its planned parking garage.

Procaccianti had originally received a demolition approval for the police and fire building in December from the DRC, but a lengthy appeal process put the entire project on hold until recently.

Procaccianti first took its plans for an office tower before the DRC in November, when a public hearing was held.

After that hearing, the developer made significant changes to the plan, and came back in December asking for approval to raze the old building.

The DRC gave its approval, contingent on Procaccianti obtaining building permits for the tower.

But a consortium of local groups appealed the decision, arguing that another public hearing had to be held because serious changes were made to the design.

“The applicant substituted brand-new drawings, and that was in violation of all sorts of rules,” said Deming Sherman, of Edwards, Angell, Palmer & Dodge, representing the appellants.

At a meeting earlier in the spring, the Zoning Board agreed with the neighborhood groups, and stripped Procaccianti of its demolition permit.

The board ruled that the DRC was guilty of failing to follow its own rules in not properly posting notice of the meeting or requiring public hearings.

“We believe that if the DRC had simply followed its own rules and regulations, this matter would not be before us, and if it was, that there would be a different result,” the decision states.

While that appeal was in process, Procaccianti also attempted to bypass the appeal and go directly to the Zoning Board for a demolition permit based on the building’s poor condition.

But because of a conflict of interest and several vacant seats on the Zoning Board, the developer could not get a hearing until now.

The Zoning Board will meet Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. in City Hall to consider the application.

dbarbari@projo.com