“A Little Odd, but A Little Amazing”: Adriana Valdez Young and the Secret Mall Apartment

Building Local Power

In the early 2000s, a behemoth rose above Providence, Rhode Island. The massive Providence Place Mall was heralded as the solution to Providence's 1990s economic woes and cited as a catalyst for urban renewal. However, not all residents of Providence welcomed the mall. For one thing, the wave of corporate development inspired by the mall leveled working-class neighborhoods on Providence's West Side. These ethnically diverse neighborhoods were magnets for artists and other changemakers. In 2003, eight of those artists, including Adriana Valdez Young, undertook a project to reclaim some of what had been lost. The Secret Mall Apartment was their way to become developers in their own right. In the wake of corporate developers claiming every inch of available space, these artists found some space of their own to develop, hidden in plain sight within the mall. The project is the subject of the new documentary Secret Mall Apartment, and one of its stars joins us on this episode of Building Local Power. Our conversation with Adriana Valdez Young explains why the apartment was more than just a prank, how the mall forever altered Providence, and why inclusive design is essential for healthy urban development. Listen in, and never look at a mall the same way again. For the full transcript and related resources, visit the episode page: https://ilsr.org/articles/blp-a-little-odd-but-a-little-amazing