Two days before the deadline for the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) to renew the lease for its Providence headquarters, the state panel tasked with approving a 10-year agreement requested more time Tuesday so it can review a last-minute air quality report and schedule a public hearing.
Two dozen people packed the second floor Department of Administration conference room for a special meeting of the State Properties Committee. The meeting only lasted 20 minutes, but the agenda did not allow for public comment on whether the state should continue to lease the building at 101 Friendship Street.
The lease is up on Nov. 30. But July 31 is when DCYF needs the committee’s approval, or else it must start looking for a new headquarters somewhere else.
Ahead of the meeting, SEIU Local 580 president Matthew Gunip — whose union represents roughly 300 of the 460 DCYF workers in the building — set up a collection of photographs, most printed at around 2 to 3-feet high, taken inside the building in the capital city’s Jewelry District.
Images included water leaking from a ceiling, a rotting rat inside of a trash bag, and black specks surrounding an air vent.
“And that’s what was going on in the office as of Friday,” he told Rhode Island Current.
DCYF Chief of Staff Misty Delgado took photos of the union’s visual aids on her phone and told the committee that officials would “look into it and see if it’s valid.”
“The reality is a lot of this is theatrics,” she said as the union workers in attendance groaned.
The committee voted unanimously to continue approval of the proposed 10-year lease in order to schedule a public hearing. No date was announced as of Tuesday.
“As you can see there’s quite a bit of public interest in this,” said the committee’s chairman, Marco Schiappa.
Officials for DCYF and the Department of Administration first sought the approval of a new decade-long lease from the State Properties Committee on July 22, but the panel instead continued the matter to have more time to review a two-page 2023 air quality report it received the night before.
In the week since, Schiappa said “more has come to light.”
“We received this morning a brand new air quality report, which clearly we have not been able to decipher,” he said.
Indeed, Deputy Attorney General Adi Goldstein told Rhode Island Current after the meeting that the new five-page report was delivered only five-minutes before the panel convened.
“Lawyers enjoy the fine print ,and that’s not really enough time,” Goldstein said.
The report stated that the DCYF headquarters was “operating at safe and acceptable levels of particulate matter.”
“At this time our testing confirmed that there is no action necessary regarding Indoor Air Quality,” it stated.
Committee members still have some concerns over the state of the building, citing recent grievances filed by union workers organized under SEIU Local 580.
A recent union survey found nearly 86% of respondents did not want the building’s lease to renew when it ends on Nov. 30, 2025, due to problems with the building’s aging interior. The most commonly cited issues involved odors and poor air circulation — along with infestations by insects, mice and other rodents populating the building’s five floors..
“This is a long lease,” said committee member Nicholas Vaz, special assistant attorney general to Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha. “It’s 10 years in a building, and we need to make sure that we’re taking over a building that’s safe.”
Delgado maintained that the department’s Providence headquarters is “up to snuff.”
“The building is healthy, the building is safe,” she told Vaz. “We understand that there are certain circumstances that have arised that we have addressed.”
Because the committee postponed a decision on the renewal Schiappa acknowledged that DCYF will likely not meet its deadline, but suggested the department could negotiate new terms with its landlord in the interim.
“That will have to be negotiated with the landlord at this point,” he said.
The agenda for Tuesday’s meeting lists the owners as Provident Property, LLC, headquartered in New York City. But a receptionist for the company said in a phone call that the property was no longer managed by Provident, referring Rhode Island Current to the number of BruMa Realty located in the Bronx.
A representative for BruMa did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Delgado called the committee’s postponement “unfortunate.” But Goldstein said the state has the obligation to protect its workers and can easily negotiate a new lease.
“It’s not too much to ask,” she said.
DCYF Director Ashley Deckert joined Delgado and Adam Boudreaux, the Department of Administration’s chief property manager, in appearing before the committee. Deckert only asked a question on which air quality report required additional clarification. She left before the meeting adjourned.
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
