Kennedy Plaza is crowded with buses and people in the afternoon.

The Providence Journal / Andrew Dickerman

PROVIDENCE — From the 17th-floor ballroom of the Providence Biltmore, Kennedy Plaza and the parks surrounding it look like what many hope it could be: an idyllic yet vibrant central square for the city.

But at ground level, Kennedy Plaza is overcrowded with buses and traffic, and requires a significant police presence at all times. Burnside Park is underutilized, the ice rink is cut off from much of the rest of the park and the northwest corner is a archipelago of traffic islands, creating a pedestrian hazard and a traffic logjam.

It doesn’t have to be that way, an outside consultant told city officials, business owners, residents and representatives of nonprofit groups in the ballroom yesterday, envisioning a Kennedy Plaza that is ringed by shops, full of attractions and serves as the hub for a different kind of transit system, one based on trolleys or trams.

“All over the world, people are coming back to these great squares. Once you’ve got a great square, the rest of your city is going to fall into place,” said Fred Kent, president of the nonprofit Project for Public Spaces, the New York-based consulting and advocacy group that led yesterday’s brainstorming session.

The Project for Public Spaces was brought to Providence by a partnership of the city, landowners around Kennedy Plaza and pro-business groups such as the Providence Foundation to try to spur discussion on reinventing the plaza.

To make Kennedy Plaza work, Kent told the 100 people assembled atop the Biltmore, the park needs to be filled with and ringed by attractions like vibrant storefronts that would draw outsiders to the area.

“We need to have a lot of amenities and a lot of reasons to be in this space.”

To accomplish that, Providence could look into some outrageous ideas, like creating a paid pleasure garden such as Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, or creating a beach in front of City Hall as Paris does in the summer, Kent said. But a series of smaller steps, coupled with some large goals, could make Kennedy Plaza a draw for tourists, on par with Benefit Street and Federal Hill.

“Great cities have 10 great destinations. You need more than you have,” he said.

Providence could also achieve that by treading a simpler path — bringing back the regular markets that long kept downtown Providence vibrant and could help return the area to its onetime glory.

“That’s your history and you need to return to that,” Kent said.

Then there’s the issue of the homeless. Kennedy Plaza, and particularly Burnside Park, is a frequent refuge for the homeless year-round. Kent said that the best way to approach the issue of what he called the “undesirables” is to make the park a draw for others.

“The best way to handle the undesirables is to make it attractive to everyone else,” he said.

The real re-invention of the plaza will take years, however, and large pools of money. Kennedy Plaza needs to move away from being the hub of the city’s bus system and move toward a more pedestrian and eco-friendly tram, trolley or light-rail system, Kent said.

“You need to move towards a system of trams without any question,” Kent said.

That dovetails nicely with the plans of Mayor David N. Cicilline, who has advocated creation of a trolley system in Providence and has said he supports decentralizing the city’s bus system, which could help end the overcrowding at Kennedy Plaza.

Just this month, Providence asked transit experts for proposals to craft a transit plan for the city, including the possibility of a streetcar system.

“This project is really really important. This space, which is really the heart and the center of the downtown, and the center of the city, is an important public space in terms of the message it conveys about the vitality and life of our city, and of what Providence is,” Cicilline said.

“If you look at the way this public space was used at the turn of the century, it was one of the most vibrant, welcoming, exciting parts of the city, and this process we have embarked upon is going to ensure it returns to being that kind of space,” Cicilline said.

But much can be accomplished in the short term, said Daniel Baudouin, director of the Providence Foundation. He said the city will work with private entities ringing the park to put on markets, concerts and activities this spring and summer, to build momentum and help people realize what a resource the park can be.

“The key is to really get something done in the short term. There are some things that we can do if there is enough community energy behind it — and I think there is — to really bring some activity in there in the spring and the summer that can show the potential of the place.”

Baudouin also suggested draws such as playground equipment and bocce courts as short-term fixes that could serve as a draw.

This is not the first time Providence has dreamed big about Kennedy Plaza, and federal dollars have often been the catalyst for turning those dreams into reality. The plaza was known for much of its 160-year history as Exchange Place because of its role as the city’s prime connection between trains and other modes of travel. Union Station, the former train station that is now the home of the Rhode Island Foundation, opened in 1898.

The plaza underwent extensive renovations in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and in the 1980s took on much of the appearance it has today. In 1998, the $3.7-million skating rink opened, and more recently, RIPTA opened a $9.5 million intermodal transportation center to act as a bus hub in 2002.

However it seeks to reinvent itself this time, Kent said that Providence must dream big. The city often falls into the trap of comparing itself only to American benchmarks. Rather than looking at other mid-size New England cities such as Hartford, Providence needs to think bigger.

“You ought to be comparing yourselves to Copenhagen or Zurich, because those are the best cities of your size, anywhere,” he said.

dbarbari@projo.com