Allens Avenue bizs move to keep out mixed use

STRICT USE: Lisa Fortin, manager at Sprague Energy, at the company’s terminal on Allens Avenue. Businesses in the corridor are looking to bar mixed-use developments. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
STRICT USE: Lisa Fortin, manager at Sprague Energy, at the company’s terminal on Allens Avenue. Businesses in the corridor are looking to bar mixed-use developments. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

Industrial businesses on the Providence waterfront are looking to close the book – for good – on plans to diversify and redevelop Allens Avenue.
The Working Waterfront Alliance, which represents eight companies on the Allens Avenue corridor, have petitioned the city to change the zoning on both sides of the street to prevent any nonindustrial activity there.
Since bold plans to bring hotels, apartments and stores to Allens Avenue were killed about three years ago, the waterfront has been viewed as a safe haven for the scrap metal and energy companies that operate there.
But even though Providence’s comprehensive plan calls for industrial use only on the waterfront, the city zoning code still contains some possible avenues for mixed-use development there.
It’s these openings the Alliance hopes to eradicate from the code to snuff out any future visions of residential or commercial activity along the corridor.
“This will give industrial businesses the certainty they need to invest in their property without the threat of being placed next to incompatible uses,” said alliance spokesman Christopher D. Hunter. “The reason the Alliance was created was to not allow condos and hotels here, because inevitably residents would complain about the industrial uses and we think they should be given the chance to stay and grow.”
The proposed changes to the zoning ordinance would make separate changes to the inland side of Allens, now zoned heavy industrial, and the water side of the street now zoned marine industrial.
On the inland side, the changes prohibit live-work space, day care, libraries, museums, art galleries, spectator assembly, outdoor recreation, marinas, sports facilities, bars, restaurants, television studios and even “arts and crafts” manufacturing.
On the water side, residential mixed use and live-work space – now allowed – would be prohibited, as would restaurants, day care facilities, libraries, museums, art galleries and anything where spectators gather.
Already, it would be extremely difficult for anyone to build anything involving those uses on the waterfront side, as they would have to contend with the W-3 district’s intent to “promote the Port of Providence and related maritime industrial and commercial uses within the areas of Providence’s waterfront.” The currently allowed commercial uses must “be a part of a marine enterprise or are dependent on access to the Port of Providence.”
The changes would also correct what Alliance members describe as a mistake in the current zoning that prohibits shipbuilding and gasoline-storage businesses, two of the area’s marine industrial stalwarts.
“I don’t think these changes are a big deal because it was effectively no [for nonindustrial uses] before,” said Andrew M. Teitz, the attorney representing the Alliance in the zoning change. “We see this as essentially a cleanup.”
City Hall’s position on allowing mixed use on the waterfront has changed significantly over the last five years.
Redeveloping Allens Avenue was a priority for Providence mayors Vincent “Buddy” Cianci and David N. Cicilline, who supported the Providence 2020 plan that died in the City Council.
But unlike his predecessors, current Mayor Angel Taveras supports keeping mixed uses away from the industrial waterfront.
The city Planning Department, which previously pushed liberalizing zoning restrictions, has endorsed the Alliance zoning change, if not very enthusiastically. The City Council must still consider the proposal.
Director of Current Planning Robert Azar said his department supported the zoning change because it is consistent with the Providence Tomorrow comprehensive plan approved in 2012.
However, city planners did not include the Allens Avenue changes in the comprehensive citywide zoning rewrite now in the final stages of public comment and nearing a vote from the City Council.
The Working Waterfront Alliance has argued that forbidding mixed use on Allens Avenue will attract industrial business investment and generate blue-collar jobs.
Since the current marine-industrial zoning was adopted in 1994, investment in Allens Avenue has been mostly limited to the scrap-metal industry. Especially on the waterfront side of Allens north of Thurbers Avenue – the section targeted for mixed-use development under previous mayors – vacant lots and for-sale signs are as prominent as job creators.
“Not much is happening there,” said Mike Giuttari, president of MG Commercial Real Estate in Providence, which is listing one of the vacant Allens Avenue properties.
In the past year the historic former Atlas and Shepard warehouses have been torn down along the waterfront and properties owned by Verizon and National Grid remain unused.
Giuttari said he doesn’t see current scrap businesses deterred at all by the current zoning and Rhode Island Recycled Metals has been looking to expand further if it can get the right price for land.
The most significant investments in the northern Allens Avenue waterfront have been from Sims Metal Management, which added a scrap-metal export terminal to the Promet ship repair site in 2011, and the expansion of the Rhode Island Recycled Metals scrap yard.
Sims added roughly 20 workers to those at Promet and Rhode Island Recycled Metals has around 25 employees, according to Hunter.
Of the businesses on that strip of Allens, only the Sims-Promet facility and Sprague Energy terminal are water dependent.
Critics of the current situation on Allens include environmental groups, such as Save The Bay, which accuses the scrap-metal yards of polluting Narragansett Bay.
And others point out that, on a per-acre basis, scrap-metal yards produce less property tax revenue than most other businesses, because they don’t include much building area.
”This seems to be the last step in that fraud known as working waterfront,” said City Councilor Luis Aponte, who’s ward includes Allens Avenue and has been a leading critic of industrial-only zoning. “For the foreseeable future, opportunities to expand the tax base there are unrealistic.”
Aponte said the scrap-metal businesses would be better located in the Port of Providence further south, where scrap metal is already exported. •

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2 COMMENTS

  1. Bad idea. Only the Providence Journal thinks that it’s good idea to have an attractive part of the waterfront close to downtown dominated by a heap of rusting metal and 8 ugly businesses that provide only a few jobs, no growth prospects, next to zero investment, and limited tax dollars. It sort of confirms why the Journal is a declining entity. No, mixed use is the way to go in a old city saddled historically with a waterfront that is totally mismanaged and ugly. You know you have a lack of vision among the city fathers when the alternative to these eight ugly businesses is a park ( and a poorly maintained one at that). Almost all Eastern seaboard cities have made attempts to rectify and re-claim at least part of their waterfront for the enjoyment of the general public. Only in Providence do we have a beautiful new bridge which is viewed by a collection of storage tanks. I am sure those tanks really enjoy that view.

    Those who resist change will eventually go the way of the buggy whip.

  2. When is the last time you saw oil tankers coming up the bay? Has that car port been used at all? The businesses that are really booming down there are the strip clubs. These industrial businesses need to move further down the bay to perhaps Quonset. Look at Boston’s harbor redevelopment. The Seaport area has come a long way. Now it’s Providence’s turn.