Downtown Providence measures a storm by its parking lots — the wide flat acres behind the office blocks, the ramps, the loading aprons, all of it needing to be open before the first shift. VAST Professional Property Services takes on snow removal at that scale, plowing lots and drives and clearing entrances and walkways across the city. Up the hill the Independent Man stands out in the weather all night without complaint; down here the trucks do much the same. There is a particular pleasure in a big lot finished at dawn: clean lanes, snow pushed to the far corners, the painted stripes on the asphalt visible again. The city opens on time, and the lots look like nothing happened at all.