PROVIDENCE_ Former Providence Mayor Joseph Paolino Jr., who owns a big slice of the city's downtown real-estate, offered a blunt assessment of the local economy. In short, he said, "downtown is dead."

The John F. Fogarty Building on Fountain Street is vacant. So is the former police and fire complex at LaSalle Square. And it won't be long, he says, before the Bank of America building in Kennedy Plaza empties out, too.
Nobody is buying, he said.

"The only economic development you've had in this city," Paolino said, "is Tent City." (The reference is to an encampment of about 80 homeless people and their supporters under a soon-to-be torn down stretch of Route 195 off Wickenden St.)

His comments came during an interview in his office last Friday about one of the properties he's trying to sell.

If it were up to him, Paolino said, he'd focus on getting universities and hospitals --not banks or financial companies--to fill vacant space in the city's Capital Center because they're the sectors where jobs are growing.

So, is Joe Paolino considering another run for mayor of Providence?
"I am giving serious thought to it," he said. "I think by January I'll figure it out."