City Approval Enables Brown to Proceed with Athletics Practice Facility
9/21/2023 1:38:00 PM | General
Providence’s City Plan Commission approved a new Brown Institutional Master Plan, offering a key approval to create laboratory space for cutting-edge life sciences research and a new indoor athletics training facility.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The Providence City Plan Commission (CPC) unanimously approved Brown University's new Institutional Master Plan (IMP) at its Tuesday, Sept. 19, meeting.
The approval provides the authorization required for Brown to proceed with an athletics practice facility on College Hill. The CPC's public hearing and vote followed a series of community meetings in which Brown leaders detailed plans for both projects with local residents, neighborhood associations, community groups and elected officials.
Brown's master planning process and community outreach ensures the University's planning efforts are carefully coordinated with the city, said Russell Carey, executive vice president for planning and policy at Brown, advancing a productive relationship between the University and its home city.
"Carefully planning major projects with city leaders and residents is our responsibility as a committed neighbor and community partner," Carey said. "The practice facility at our athletics complex will mitigate existing noise impacts on neighbors, and advances Brown's goals and align with the needs of the state, city and the neighborhoods in which they'll be based."
The approval of the IMP paves the way for the University to move forward in designing and constructing an indoor practice facility at the Erickson Athletic Complex on the northeast corner of its College Hill campus. As envisioned, the 76,000-square-foot facility would replace the current Meister-Kavan Field, moving existing activities to an enclosed building and mitigating noise impacts on neighbors. The building would also advance Brown's capacity for varsity, intramural and recreational sports activity.
While the project will require additional authorization at Brown and specific approvals with the city — for example, review of the ILSB height by Providence's Downtown Design Review Committee — the CPC vote offers approval on the formal master planning process that must precede new phases of physical development for higher education and health care institutions across Providence.
Construction for the indoor practice facility is targeted to begin in Summer 2024 and last approximately 18 months.
