514 Broadway - West End
A beautiful Victorian right on Broadway, empty, boarded up, and with a surprise piano out front!
Nearby Houses:
None yet photographed. Please take a picture if you see one.
514 Broadway
- May 28th, 2009
- Photog: Funsickle
- Category: residential
Robert Blechman Trustee
514 Broadway Investment Trust
10736 Jefferson
Culver CA 90230
Tax Code
Two to Five Family Residence
Zoning
R3
Year Built (Primary)
Land Value
$127,400
Building Value
$445,800
Total Value
$573,200
umm….he’s a rather interesting dude i would say
http://www.pokerpages.com/players/profiles/16894/robert-blechman.htm
Woa, seriously?
Robert Blechman Trustee
514 Broadway Investment Trust
As mentioned in another comment, Mr. Blechman may be a simple “nominee” to hold title, or he may also be a “true owner” cloaked as both a “beneficiary” and “trustee”. Chances are he knows what the deal is.
Wow, lets get a hold of this dude. Someone, feel free to take a shot before me. But yeah, let’s get him on the phone or something.
Wow, lets get a hold of this dude. Someone, feel free to take a shot before me. But yeah, let’s get him on the phone or something.
I would like to see someone do something with all of the opportunities showing up here. There is too much talk of “what is the city going to do”. The city is going to do nothing. Politicians are by nature “whiners”, not “doers”. Worse, the city is broke.
There is opportunity here, the problem is that financing is almost non-existant. Sophisticated sellers (which probably includes most of them) will know this.
My only concern is we are still a long way from “bottom”. There is no “economic engine” driving Providence. I think I mentioned that when I moved back here in the middle 90′s $150,000 would buy you a pretty good sized pile of bricks off Blackstone. That wasn’t so long ago.
Problem is, there is only opportunity here in theory. Missing owners, missing banks of REO properties, and little to no financing locks turnaround in a standstill. Hence that these properties have been Forgotten. As if they don’t exist at all.
And those who seem them as not Forgotten (everyone using the site, pissed off neighbors) have only two choices. Do forget about them, pretend they don’t exists. Or, Try to track down the players and persuade, force, or suggest some sort of policy action THAT ALLOWS opportunity to happen én mass.
Also, the story is not just with the houses. Each image of a forgotten home stands for proxy of one or several forgotten families as record of that “other America” which may as just as well be forgotten by the haves.
Stump, not trying to be at all argumentative here. Opportunity comes in many guises and disguises. Let’s review a little history. My older relatives tell me that Providence developed quite a reputation in the “Great Depression” of the 1930′s. People were jumping off porches and throwing themselves in front of expensive cars to collect insurance. Don’t know much about it, but this suggests Rhode Island law favors “strict liability”.
Let’s go a little further. Let us assume that Deutsche Bank owns several properties in the West End valued at $30,000 each. That is chump change to them, not worth the cost of any administration. Let us assume further that someone is injured in one of these properties and sues Deutsche Bank. Or, they are hit with a fine for permitting a crack house. The bank responds “we aren’t the real owners, ownership is spread among all of these bondholders, etc”. The judge says sorry, you’re the guy on the spot and your name is all over the papers. So, you pay, and of course you can chase those bondholders if you want. They will be giving those buildings away. I can readily imagine other scenarios where they will wish to disassociate themselves. Just wait.
Heres an example. Some years ago I knew a drug dealer in Boston who had purchased a small strip mall. 100% financed at $500,000. He ran afoul of the law and had to do a little time. This amounted to taking French Leave of his creditors. While he was away, the bank foreclosed. In no time at all the strip mall was throughly vandalized. After he had “paid his debt to society” he was released. Almost immediately he was approached by the bank with an offer to buy the mall back for $300,000 with 100% financing. Which he did. This is plainly stated, but not unusual. Read the blogs on what the government is doing with General Motors.
A bit of caution befre making a large investment. look at Detroit with 40% of the houses vacant, that is every other one. Nothing is happening there, the “economic engine” is gone. To some extent that is true in Ptovidence. When all the housing we are talking about here was built, the residents walked to work at American Locomotive, Corliss Engine, Brown & Sharpe, Brownell Mill Equipment, etc, etc. Those are gone. At the time these were “good jobs at a good wage”. Providence was a very wealthy city. If you are under 25 you don’t remember Providence before the big run up in prices. It is well to remember that the run up was almost entirely artificial and based on “sub-prime” mortages to people who could never have realistically been expected to pay them. Rhode Island’s population was stable only because of the large influx of illegal immigrants prepared to do menial jobs at low wages, everyone else was leaving. This is not Detroit, there are still the colleges, hospitals and government. Still, I think it is very reasonable to expect prices to fall back to 1995 levels. Look at those property cards and see what they were selling for then. That is only 15 years ago, for a lot of prospective buyers that is not even 1/2 a lifetime ago.
OT, the Broadway neighborhood. In pursuit of my insane hobbies I went up to Olneyville today to pick up an Atlas lathe. I came back down Broadway. Feeling a bit hungry I stopped at a little restuarant on Broadway. The menu was a bit too Chi-chi for me so I opted for an Amaretto on the rocks. They charged me by the shot at $6.00. I checked against a bottle at home, there are 40 shots to the $24.00 bottle. I don’t think I will be going back. Plus, they had too many people working for the number of tables.
With your lathe maybe you can get to some stair banister turning for all the vacant houses, huh Faust?
Didn’t see as being argumentative at all BTW. Your story cracked me up. And your parallel with Detroit and needing an economy engine is salient.
With your lathe maybe you can get to some stair banister turning for all the vacant houses, huh Faust?
Sorry, my “insane hobbies” are more precise than that. I think in terms of if it is .005ths off, throw it away. With the Atlas I am sure that I now have enough equipment to build a 747, but what I am working on is a minature, operating Corliss Steam Engine. Since every amatuer machinist builds a steam engine, I am also working on a silencer for my Mannlicher-Schoenauer.
Didn’t see as being argumentative at all BTW. Your story cracked me up. And your parallel with Detroit and needing an economy engine is salient.
That truly worries me about Providence’s future, I don’t see the powers at be doing anything real. Things look cheap now, but as I said look at the property cards for sale prices in the 90′s. There is a long way to go. When you drive around in RI, you may notice that a large percentage of new construction (at least the smaller buildings) are mecically related. That means that Medicaire and the insurance companies are supporting what little investment is going on.
PS, I was only kidding about the silencer for the Mannlicher. But if you liked the other “urban story” try this. Long before Aberchrombie & Fitch was a clothing brand, it was a gun store. That was also before its bankruptcy. During WWII, they had a sale on Mannlichers because they were German and ammunition was unavailable. My grandfather couldn’t resist. They had a few rounds and took him up on the roof to test fire into barrels of sand. This was in NYC, I think 38th and Park. Can you imagine that today, helicopters, SWAT teams. He also found a gunsmith of 5th Avenue to re-chamber it for American ammo. Cities ain’t what they used to be.
Our landlady took a tour of that house. She said it’s beautiful inside, but obviously needs a lot of work. I’m trying to remember exactly what she said, but I believe it was that the owners were a couple that live in California. They don’t know what to do with it, so it’s just sitting there. Seems to match with the Robert Blechman story. Next time I see her, I’ll ask her about it again.
This house is actually has a little bit of local fame. It was the site of the Tirocchi sisters dress shop from the early 1900s until the 1940s. After one of the sisters passed away, it was shut up until the 1990s, when the owner, a doctor (and son in law of one of the sisters) allowed RISD access to all of the dressmaking materials that were still in the house. There is an extensive web site on the history of the place accessible from stg.risd.edu – including a couple of interior shots taken “then” and some “now” – (1999).
From that point, it has sat empty and is in trust. Churchill & Banks had the listing for the sale of the place and a small sign advertising their listing is tacked to a door at the rear. I am not sure if they still have the listing, but you used to be able to find it (and a couple of lovely shots of the interior) by searching the MLS. Officially, this is the George Prentice Mansion and was originally built in the 1880s to house the owner of the Providence Wire Nail Company. Unofficially, it is a spectacular building and I’d give my right arm to be able to save it before it starts really going.
Very interesting information here! Let me add a bit of less interesting but perhaps useful info. Blechman is not the owner, only the trustee. I personally know the current “real” owners of this property. They live out of state and would like nothing more than to see this beautiful property go to someone who has a genuine passion for it. If you know someone who might be interested, or just want to arrange a look inside, contact me
I have some people that would like to see this property, please email me
mstruzy@gmail.com
There is a for sale sign in front of this house now. They’ve also trimmed/mowed the yard, so it looks presentable. I’ll try to take a photo of it on my way home tonight.
Listed on loopnet (commercial real estate site) for 385k.
“Listed on loopnet (commercial real estate site) for 385k.”
Shows you the importance of “location”. If this were on the East Side it would be listed at $2,000,000 and probably sold.
That seems low to me, even given location. The lot itself huge for what’s otherwise a fairly densely packed area.
Could there be some sort of easment on the building? I couldn’t imagine this not costing a small fortune to even bring back from the edge – - let alone turn it back into a showplace.
I drive by this place every day on my way home and the deterioration is not all that apparent from the front but from the back and sides its pretty bad. Every time I go by I cross my fingers that no one has gotten inside yet.
cmj912 you’re right restoration of Italianate Victorians is extremely costly. Repair to all of that wood trim is “hand work”.
Buy:Petcam (Metacam) Oral Suspension.Lumigan.Accutane.Arimidex.Zovirax.Actos.Zyban.Synthroid.Prevacid.100% Pure Okinawan Coral Calcium.Retin-A.Prednisolone.Valtrex.Nexium.Mega Hoodia.Human Growth Hormone….