Conley sees heap of trouble from Sims’ scrap metal

MOUNTAIN VIEW: Patrick Conley’s view from his Allens Avenue building includes the Providence waterfront and piles of scrap metal. / PBN PHOTO/DAVID LEVESQUE
MOUNTAIN VIEW: Patrick Conley’s view from his Allens Avenue building includes the Providence waterfront and piles of scrap metal. / PBN PHOTO/DAVID LEVESQUE

Just when the fight for the future of the Providence waterfront seemed settled, a new battle has emerged on Allens Avenue.
No longer is the conflict over condominiums or luxury apartments. Now it’s the towering pile of scrap metal that towers over the long-debated and underutilized area.
As he has been before, lawyer, developer, and first-ever Rhode Island historian laureate Patrick Conley is in the middle of the controversy.
Conley believes that in stockpiling scrap in the giant heap next to his property, neighbor Sims Metal Management has damaged his historic commercial building, another belonging to Pete’s Tire Barns and city water mains.
The private-sector leader of an unsuccessful effort to bring mixed-use development to the industrial waterfront, Conley is suing Sims and has asked a federal court to shut down its Allens Avenue export terminal.
“It has been somewhat of a nightmare – their activities are inconveniencing other businesses and damaging city infrastructure,” Conley said about Sims’ Providence operation, which ships scrap metal collected throughout New England for overseas recycling. “That is why we are pursuing this vigorously. There is going to be no finality to the damage claims against Sims. It is an ongoing trespass.”
Of course, Conley’s dreams for Allens Avenue darkened even before Sims bought the former Promet Marine Services shipyard next door in October 2011.
He bought the Allens Avenue properties that would come to be known as Conley’s Wharf in 2005, with the hope that it would become the lynchpin of a mixed-use redevelopment of the waterfront supported by then-Mayor David N. Cicilline and outlined in the expansive Providence 2020 plan.
After completing a $7 million renovation of the 1899-built Providence Gas Company building at 200 Allens Avenue with state and federal historic tax credits, he started working on plans for a 320-room hotel and 400-slip marina.
But existing industrial businesses on Allens Avenue saw new shops, restaurants, condominiums, apartments and offices as a threat to the working waterfront and found allies on the Providence City Council.
The zoning change needed to allow mixed-use development on Allens Avenue never made it out of the council ordinance committee and Cicilline was replaced by Mayor Angel Taveras, who hailed Sims’ arrival as a blue-collar jobs creator. The market also turned against Conley, crushing demand for new apartments and the initiative for a zoning change.
Conley’s Providence Piers filed for bankruptcy in 2010 and in February Conley was forced to sell 4.25 acres of his Allens Avenue holdings, including the wharf, to National Grid for $4 million. National Grid is responsible for cleaning up contamination on the site from previous owners.
Still Conley presses on, renting space to tenants, including a custom surfboard builder and some of the many organizations he’s involved with, such as the Heritage Harbor Museum.
It was before a meeting of the Fabre Line Club on Jan. 26 that the first damage to 200 Allens Ave. was detected, according to the lawsuit, when investigation of a loud noise coming from the south side of the building found a 0.75-inch gap between a stairwell and the building.
Many Allens Avenue buildings sit on fill and Conley believes the stairwell tower moved and cracked because of the weight of the Sims scrap heap, which had been growing over the winter less than 100 feet away.
At the time, before Sims dredged its wharf for freighters to come take the scrap away, Conley estimates the pile of metal reached at least 70 feet high and weighed 100 million pounds.
While the “mountain” has shrunk somewhat since then, Conley said when Sims packs down the metal with a giant steel claw, the earth and his building shake as if from seismic tremors.
Because Sims has not only damaged the building, but continues to threaten it and has lowered its value, according to the suit, Conley is asking for compensation for repairs and unspecified damages on top of an end to the scrap stockpiling and compaction.
He said that after seeing cracks in the walls at the Pete’s Tire Barns building next door, Conley has asked the owner to join the suit.
In addition to the building damage, the suit also blames the Sims-induced tremors for four water-line breaks on Public Street over the summer and one in front of Cheaters strip club on Allens Avenue. Sims declined to answer specific questions about the lawsuit.
“We believe that we are complying with the applicable operating requirements for this facility,” spokesman Daniel Strechay said. “We cannot argue the merits of this case in the media or outside the courtroom, but remain confident that we will prevail in this proceeding once the facts are presented to the court.”
In addition to Sims, Conley named the city in the lawsuit for allowing the metal recycler to operate on Allens Avenue without a “junkshop” permit.
Providence City Solicitor Jeffrey Padwa said controversy around Sims’ permitting status is caused more by the obsolescence of ordinances related to its type of work than fault of the company.
“We are applying ordinances that were originally passed in 1914 and were revised during World War II and are out of date to deal with 21st-century commerce,” Padwa said. “It is arguable whether these ordinances apply to [Sims].”
Padwa said because it’s unclear whether Sims would be required to get a “junkshop” permit, the city did not require it when the company bought the property. Sims has now applied for the permit, which addresses retail scrap transactions not initially planned for the terminal, but it has not been issued yet because of delays more “on the city’s end,” Padwa said.
In addition to Conley, Sims has also been a target of environmental groups alarmed by the recent expansion of scrap and salvage operations on the waterfront.
After complaints from Save The Bay, the R.I. Department of Environmental Management issued a violation notice to Sims in May for failing to apply for an expansion of operations into scrap recycling.
In July, Sims settled with DEM, agreeing to pay a $25,000 fine and construct further runoff controls by June 2013.
Lawsuit or not, Sims isn’t likely to go away.
The company recently broke ground on a $30 million processing plant and auto shredder in Johnston that will send scrap to Providence for export.
Scrap and waste shipments are Rhode Island’s top export, accounting for 30 percent of all shipments, which more than doubled between 2009 and 2011, according to U.S. Commerce Department figures. •

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