Thayer Street, #279

About this Property

#Proposal

This proposal started in 2022 with a request to demolish three and a half structures, the earliest dating from 1875. The land along this commercial strip in the middle of a college campus is expensive and rents are high — therefore, developers want to cash in with more units.

A proposal by Michael and Paul Boutros and their company Two Cousins came before the Providence City Plan Commission starting in May of 2022. Michael Boutros is also owner of the adjacent commercial block with current tenants Chinatown and Mighty Mike’s Pizza.¹ The proposal included a new four story apartment building with ground floor retail (PDF plans) on the site, using all of the available land. After a few rounds of design review changes, the plan was approved. As far as we know, while the meetings were public, there was little neighborhood input on the plans.

Very little progress was made in 2023 and early 2024. Then in September of 2024, the project went before the CPC again to request approval for an additional level to total five stories, 16 apartment units, and two ground floor retail spaces on a site of 4,900 square feet.

Since approval, progress seems to have completely stalled. Notice the minor differences between photos from October 2024 and July of 2025. A foundation has been poured and capped with some cinder block structures for the main stairs (presumably) started, but nothing that looks like the building it will eventually become.

#Design Reception

The architect on record is Brisbano + Associates, Inc who announced the new project on the website in 2022 but have not updated the project with the additional floor.

No neighborhood pushback was on record at the CPC meetings. It could be that those with legal standing as abutters are other developers or institutions with little interest in what happens outside their respective properties. As long as the street continues to be desirable because of the student population, and they can continue to charge premiums for rent, why should they care what a new building looks like?

To us, the building is bland and rectangular and flat and adds nothing new or interesting to the street. It seems like a lost opportunity. The Urban Outfitters building has a point of view (one of a chic industrial quality); the former Gap and now Warby Parker building tried to look like something with its brick exterior and wooden cornice; buildings like the Avon and the former Andres and even the Shark Bar building have a small, mid-century commercial quality of Art Deco or a low quality attempt at Art Deco that looks charming now. This building doesn’t even try to be darkitecture which has a dark stone and glass aesthetic that it is reaching for.