The Power of Words. Arch St. ark awash in rot

7/2/96
Arch St. ark awash in rot
Residents have struggled in vain to ride their neighborhood of a rotting cabin cruiser and tons of other refuse on a derelict lot at 40 Arch St.

By KAREN LEE ZINER
Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer

       PROVIDENCE -- The rotting wooden cabin cruiser juts from a vacant West End lot like a jagged shark tooth amid mounds of urban trash.
       The vessel tilts, resting on bricks and barrels, leaning toward a house that sits less than 10 feet away. Boards curl up from the prow. A slender tree pokes through the cabin. Men climb in at night. Neighbors suspect the men are smoking crack. Neighbors fear flames.
       This is 40 Arch St., one of thousands of vacant parcels in Providence - another potential death trap in a distressed part of the city, one that the Providence renaissance hasn't touched. No firepots gaily blazing in the newly merged rivers. No celebratory fireworks or melodious sound effects. Just layer upon layer of trash, an urban dump. Garbage begets garbage, the way one graffiti mark begets another.
       For at least two years, residents have raised their voices against the situation at 40 Arch St. -- to no avail.
       That is until Friday afternoon, when a reporter's phone call to City Hall alerted Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. to the situation.
       "Clean it up," Cianci ordered a staffer. "Monday morning. Boom. Bing. Gone!"
       Yesterday morning, a city trash truck showed up. According to its driver, the task at hand far exceeded the truck's capacity, and the truck drove away.
       "Tomorrow," promised Fred Ihenacho, director of the Department of Public Works.
       The lot was owned by Conrad Paul Brun, who died three years ago of AIDS. It is now owned by his estate, although no will has moved through probate. And, since Brun died, back taxes haven't mounted high enough for the city to put it up for sale.
       Residents of Arch Street and developers of adjacent property complain, but nothing happens.
       So the lemonade trucks jingle-jangle in the afternoons. Kids wheel past on bikes and scooters. The boat remains, a kind of treehouse on the ground, amidst the flotsam and jetsam of unseen and unconcerned people.
       Imagine living next to this:
       Three dozen tires. Six gas tanks and counting. Plastic paint buckets. Welding gloves. A moldy winter coat with worms and slugs crawling through it. Broken porcelain. The top of a coconut.
       Roof tiles, refrigerator shelves. A wading pool. A tan couch. Broken glass. Motor-oil bottles. A Jack Daniel's bottle. A blue toothbrush.
       Two fish heads.
       A blue late-model car, stripped to its bones. Radio gone; steering wheel gone; bumpers gone. Tires, doors and roof gone. Just a hulk, a huge fractured robin's egg sitting on bricks.
       A green sleeping bag. Lengths of pipe. Scraps of wood. Shutters. Doors.
       Oil drums sunk into the weeds. A shopping cart tipped on its side. Smashed window frames. PVC valves (new).
       A barrel bearing the label "26 percent BeAmmonium Hydroxide." The label notes corrosive contents. Is the barrel empty? Does it contain residue?
       Who knows.
       Rats prowl the lot, laying claim to filthy mattresses and disintegrating green garbage bags. Then they disappear back into tunnels that pock the area like tiny sinkholes.

      A mother worries
       Rosa Hernandez lives next to this, in a freshly painted Victorian house, with a tidy backyard.
       But she refuses to open her first-floor bedroom window, fearing someone may be in the boat. She worries about the boat catching fire, flames licking her boys' bedroom.
       And there are the vermin.
       "We don't even go outside at night," she says, "because there are big rats."
       Despite how clean she keeps her apartment, with its cheerful Crayola curtains and bedspreads and scrubbed floors, she describes a kind of bug, like a centipede, that crawls in from outside.
       Above her, Argemas Garcia has seen men calling to her young daughters from inside the boat.
       "This is dangerous for the children," she says.

      City abstains
       "The sinking ship of that community" is what Alma F. Green, executive director of Women's Development Corporation, calls the boat. Green's agency renovated the house that Hernandez and Garcia live in.
       When the restoration was under way, Green went to the city's Office of Code Enforcement, the Fire and Police Departments and the city solicitor's office about the adjacent lot.
       "They said, 'We really can't do anything,' " because the property is still technically privately held - even though the owner died. "All I was asking for was something real simple," says Green. "It's a public-safety issue - health, safety and security. Who the hell knows who is going in and out of that boat? Kids can go in and out of that boat . . ."
       But nothing happened.
       "What makes me angry," says the Rev. William Beatty, pastor of the New Life Community Church of All Faith, on America Street, "is if I got one little stone loose on my house, they come and put a violation on it. But when you call and call, and you think they're gonna clean up that lot, they don't. The city doesn't do anything."
       Says Lucio Beneduce, who with his brother restored a 19-room Victorian mansion on Arch Street: "As far as Providence is concerned, this (illegal dump) is out of sight, out of mind. Nobody pays any attention."
       Beneduce calls the boat "an accident waiting to happen."
       "You ask people about the boat, and they shrug their shoulders. It's like Noah landed there - like it had been there since the beginning of time."

      Tragedy intervenes
       Conrad Paul Brun, originally from New Bedford, bought the three-story gray house at 42 Arch St. in 1987. He also owned the lot at number 40.
       Brun, 29, ran a dance studio in New Bedford, where he taught aerobics and tap, says his aunt, Claire Brun, of New Bedford.
       Neighbors say that Brun was planning to start a dance studio on Arch Street. They also say that the boat belonged to him - that he hoped to fix it up.
       But by October 1992, Claire Brun learned her nephew was dying of AIDS. Shortly thereafter, Brun left Providence to live with his mother, in New Bedford.
       Then, on May 4, 1993, tragedy struck at 42 Arch St. After a third-floor tenant reported not having seen the first-floor tenant for several weeks, police and fire personnel broke into the third floor and found a young woman hanging in the kitchen.
       Three weeks later, on May 27, the house was sold at public auction for back taxes.
       "Pair-A-Dice Realty," whose only identified partner is lawyer Patrick T. Conley, snapped up the property.
       (Conley, whose 450 investments sit throughout South Providence, Elmwood and the West End, said that he planned to transfer the house - now a shambles, with a yard full of debris and abandoned vehicles - today. The city has cited Pair-A-Dice Realty for code violations, which remain uncorrected. Conley said the new buyer takes the house "as is.")
       On July 25, 1993, Brun died of AIDS.

      Complications
       Some may think it's easy to blame the city for the problem of the abandoned boat and the lot that it sits on, but the situation may be more complex.
       "People think there's a dirty lot out there and we can just go out and clean it," says Tom Deller, deputy director of the Department of Planning and Development, but "there are procedures spelled out in law" that must be followed.
       John Palmieri, director of Planning and Development, cites a collaborative effort between the Public Works and Parks Departments and such agencies as Keep Providence Beautiful to keep city lots clean.
       "Does that mean that a lot like this might have fallen through the cracks?" says Palmieri. "Yes, that happens once in a while. But the city can take action, lien the lots. We try and work with private property owners first."
       Last Friday, City Solicitor Charles Mansolillo called 40 Arch St. a "hybrid situation" that might require time to resolve legally.
       The mayor took a more direct approach. After describing pending legislation that would give the city more power against absentee landlords with derelict lots, Cianci told Deputy Policy Director Luke Driver, lead coordinator for the Mayor's Vacant Lot Task Force, to "clean the lot." Pronto.

      High and dry
       The boat remains, run aground, an archeological exclamation point.
       A rotted ark. A sinking ship.
       On a recent afternoon, the Rev. William Beatty took a walk through the trash and rested his hand on the prow. He's chased kids out of there "all the time," he said, when they try to use it for a clubhouse.
       Just two months or so ago, he said, there was someone who appeared to be living in the boat -- "but I spoke to him," and the man scurried away.
       Meanwhile, Beatty gives voice to a refrain on the street.
       "It's gonna fall over and kill somebody."

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