Graffito x Providence

We are excited to announce our expansion into the Providence market, with our base of operations within CIC Providence, a project we worked on from 2017-2019.

At the beginning of this year, we launched our Neighborhood Investments + Partnerships practice, led by Noah, with the goal of intentionally translating our neighborhood-based retail approach into select opportunities to directly partner on joint ventures with developers and institutions on longer-term real estate plays. We knew that this new work would bring us to projects in locations and at scales that we can’t always touch with our leasing and advisory work. 

With our new expanded focus and added capacity, and in many short trips from our South Station-adjacent office on Amtrak over the past year, we have become increasingly focused on Providence’s abundance of great collaborators and development opportunities. It’s also close enough to have vital connections to our core market, but distinct enough to allow us a fresh approach.

In planning a more significant foray into Providence, we have been consistently drawn back to the Jewelry District, just south of Downtown Providence. In Wexford, CIC, and Brown University, we have past clients and collaborators investing heavily in the neighborhood, and in the 195 District, there is a significant opportunity to help a once-in-a-generation neighborhood-scale urban renewal repair project become more socially and economically vibrant at the street level. With an influx of new housing and innovation economy development, we can translate decades of learnings in work to make similar environments in Cambridge and Boston more active and robust at the ground floor level.  We are impressed with the work of the 195 District Commission and the City of Providence and are aligned with their vision for the neighborhood.

So where to start? This move has been spurred by a unique and innovative new partnership with EQT Exeter, a Philadelphia-based global real estate operator with a significant multifamily and retail footprint in Providence’s Jewelry District. Graffito will join the EQT Exeter team to lead the leasing, management and long-term success of its retail assets in and around the Jewelry District, specifically including 20,000 SF of ground floor space in Emblem 125, a 249-unit residential building at the heart of the district, neighboring Brown Medical School, Johnson & Wales University, and the Providence Performing Arts Center. In addition, Graffito and EQT Exeter have joined forces in pursuit of Parcel 5, currently out for bid by the 195 District, for which we are currently among four finalist teams under consideration.