online: www.rihumanities.org email: info@rihumanities.org phone: 401-273-2250
For over 35 years, Kenneth G. Orenstein has served government, non-profits and private businesses as a city planner, real estate broker/counselor, economic and community development consultant, project architect and property manager. In addition, he has served volunteer leadership roles in numerous non-profit, religious and civic associations, guest lectured at a number of area colleges and universities and presenter of building recycling case studies, downtown revitalization, community economic transformation, and heritage cultural tourism at major conferences.
From 1976 to 1980, he conceptualized and oversaw the joint City of Providence and RI Historical Preservation Commission funded 'Downtown Preservation and Development Team', which pioneered the application of 'Main Street" revitalization' techniques. Major projects undertaken included the creation of the Providence Performing Arts Center, the restoration of the Providence Arcade, the city's first mill conversion to mixed live work loft space and the restoration of Providence's historic City Hall. He then served as director of the Providence Foundation where he worked on several award winning infrastructure improvements including River Relocation. Since leaving the Foundation, Mr. Orenstein's has focused on finding new uses for vacant and underutilized buildings and brownfield sites.
Mr. Orenstein received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Case Western Reserve University. Towards his degree, he "read" city planning at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. From early on, he has appreciated the value the humanities plays in understanding both the causes and effects of the physical and social decline of older cities and the necessity of rebuilding communities socially as a precondition to their physical and economic revitalization. He lives in Providence.