Al Valliere saluted at Grow Smart awards ceremony
WOONSOCKET — The city’s success in providing affordable housing with area developers like Al Valliere was highlighted at the Stadium Theatre Tuesday night during Grow Smart’s 6th annual Smart Growth award ceremony.
Grow Smart has been supporting a statewide leadership approach to sustainable and equitable economic growth since 1998, and uses its annual awards gathering to highlight the best practitioners of the concept for the past year.
“Each year, passionate, creative and resourceful Rhode Islanders show us the way to tap our state’s full potential through projects, plans and policies that play to Rhode Island’s strengths and generate enduring economic benefits, both statewide and in specific neighborhoods,” said Grow Smart Executive Director Scott Wolf.
Before calling Al Valliere Jr., vice president and chairman of Nation Wide Construction, Inc., up onto the Stadium stage to collect his award, Wolf related Valliere’s work to construct affordable housing in the area.
“I’ve long been inspired by Al’s compassion, integrity and accomplishment as a neighborhood revitalization practitioner, an affordable housing advocate and a civic leader,” Wolf said. “He has earned a welldeserved reputation for doing well by doing good. And he has left his mark in many city and town village centers throughout the Blackstone Valley and the rest of Rhode Island,” Wolf said while pointing to Valliere’s work in creating planned, compact developments that make creative use of space and natural resources.
In a brief film played for the assembled Grow Smart members and supporting developers and planners, Valliere himself told of his interest in creating unique affordable developments.
“I believe in people that walk through life, that see the intention, take notice and learn,” Valliere said. “I make a living and I provide housing for people who need it,” he said.
His company, working in the area since 1972, builds affordable housing while lending itself toward “hiring people, keeping people employed and allowing people to move into safe, clean housing so as not to have to work three jobs to pay the rent,” he said.
Margaux Morisseau, director of community engagement for NeighborWorks Blackstone River Valley, a non-profit community development corporation, praised Valliere’s work in the video.
“We’ve been working with Al for a number of years and he is one of the best partners to work with; he really believes in smart growth and he has made the Blackstone Valley a much better place for everybody to live and work,” she said.
One of Valliere’s recent projects with NeighborWorks was the $6.5 million conversion of the old Mulvey’s Hardware Store at Market Square into a housing development featuring six affordable apartments and a meeting space.
Valliere himself was humble when he stepped up on stage to accept the award. “Thank you, Woonsocket,” Valliere called out before heading back to his seat.
Wolf had also welcomed Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt to the stage to offer her welcoming remarks to the gathering and Stefan Pryor, state secretary of commerce, to give greetings from the governor.
Wolf noted he had just taken a rainy tour of Woonsocket’s Main Street district with about 25 other Grow Smart members. “The potential here was incredible and some of the accomplishments here are quite substantial already,” Wolf said of the long overlooked Main Street area.
Plans to open commuter rail service at the old Woonsocket train depot linking the city with Worcester and Providence could be a “real game changer” for the city, he noted.
Baldelli-Hunt described the city, a 2016 Smart Growth winner for its downtown overlay district, “as home to a rich cultural heritage intertwined with the American Industrial Revolution.” The combination resulted in immigration patterns with French Canadian influences and for a time a great industry and commerce for the area before a scaling back occurred along with a decline in American manufacturing, according to Baldelli-Hunt.
“Today Woonsocket is once again a proud city,” Baldelli-Hunt said of the community’s more recent efforts to rebound.
“The bones of that grandeur are there, and the Boston Surface Rail Company is on the cusp of bringing rail back to Woonsocket,” she said.
“We have shed the mantle of a depressed community, swept away the cobwebs of the past failures. We look to our past as part of our identity and remain focused on the future,” she said.
“Here is where Growth Smart and its army of supporters comes in as we work to rebuild our city, our main street – we need the entire community to work and join our efforts,” Baldelli-Hunt told the gathering.
“Your advocacy, your support, your expertise, your skills will aid us in our work for the future,” she said.
The award ceremony also included remarks by Christopher A. Coes, the director of LOCUS: Responsible Real Estate Developers and Investors, on the climate of potential funding change in Washington, D.C.
Federal budget reduction requirements already in place could have an impact on affordable housing and other smart growth initiatives and Coes recommended local housing advocates regularly communicate their concerns to the state’s federal legislators.
“And if you do not work together collectively, you will not have the resources to accelerate redevelopment. And in addition to that, do not take you delegation for granted. Sen. Reed, Sen. Whitehouse, your house delegation are all great people but remember, you have to stay on top of it,” Coes said. “Unfortunately, this market area is very competitive,” Coes said of the potential for other programs to take away funding. He concluded by urging Grow Smart’s members to press the pavement “every single day” and call all the federal representatives frequently.
In addition to the presentation of Al Valliere’s Outstanding Smart Growth Leader award, the event also included recognition of the Blackstone Valley Gateway Pawtucket/Central Falls project for developing 74 new affordable rental homes across more than 15 sites the two Northern Rhode Island Communities. The project included renovation of the Gately Building in Pawtucket as an anchor to a “reinvigorated Downtown.”
Accepting the award were Andrew Pierson, assistant director of Pawtucket Central Falls Development; Linda Weisinger, Pawtucket Central Falls Development executive director; and Virgina Branch and Ashley Prester of DBVWArchitects.