Grow Smart Rhode Island recently announced that the Micro Lofts at The Arcade Providence were among the winners of the 2014 RI Smart Growth Awards for Outstanding Smart Growth Projects. The award was presented to NCA’s Design Team: J. Michael Abbott, Andrea Torizzo, and Carmen Warner and Developer Evan Granoff at the Power of Place Summit on Friday, May 23, 2014 at the Rhode Island Convention Center in Providence, RI.
The Arcade was built in 1828 as the first indoor shopping mall in America. The Metropolitan Museum of Art named the Arcade one of the finest commercial buildings in the history of American architecture. Over the course of nearly two centuries, the Arcade has survived a fire, several major hurricanes, a proposed demolition in 1944, and a succession of economic downturns.
In 2008, the Arcade closed and its fate remained uncertain. In 2010, The Providence Preservation Society issued its annual list of the City’s ten most endangered buildings and the shuttered Arcade topped the list.
In 2012, NCA’s adaptive reuse project that included 48 affordable Micro Lofts and 17 Micro Retail shops was unveiled and hailed as the landmark’s saving grace. Unlike other micro-apartment projects being built from the ground up in the US and abroad, the Arcade represents a successful and sustainable example of adaptive reuse. Today, the Arcade is a thriving mixed-use enterprise that celebrates the live, work, play model popular among the Millennial workforce.