Former E.P. gravel pit targeted for apartments

WELL-DEVELOPED: Wampanoag Meadows in East Providence is expected to resemble Driscoll Development’s Briarwood Meadows complex in Warwick, pictured above. / COURTESY DRISCOLL DEVELOPMENT
WELL-DEVELOPED: Wampanoag Meadows in East Providence is expected to resemble Driscoll Development’s Briarwood Meadows complex in Warwick, pictured above. / COURTESY DRISCOLL DEVELOPMENT

Waterfront development gets all the attention in East Providence, but the latest large residential project approved by the city would rise from the woods and subdivisions near the Massachusetts line.
City planners in late November approved a master plan from Driscoll Development LLC of Warwick to build a 308-unit rental-apartment complex on a former sand-and-gravel pit off of Wampanoag Trail.
The project, named Wampanoag Meadows, is slated to break ground in the spring and would include 15 apartment buildings, 15 garage buildings, a community center and indoor pool.
If built as planned, Wampanoag Meadows would be the largest residential project completed in East Providence since Winchester Wood off Pawtucket Avenue in the early 1990s.
“Some of the waterfront development gets the spotlight, but this is certainly a benefit to the city,” said East Providence Planning Director Jeanne Boyle.
In design and target market, Wampanoag Meadows should look a lot like the 552-unit Briarwood Meadows complex off Quaker Lane in Warwick, which Driscoll Development completed in 2006.
Each of the 15 apartment buildings would be three stories tall with units divided evenly between one bedroom and two bedrooms. Rents would be all market rate.
“The rental market has improved dramatically since 2008,” said Driscoll Development principal Paul Driscoll. “Rentals are where people are looking.”
The 56-acre property where Driscoll plans to build Wampanoag Meadows has been identified for development for several years, but previous efforts were slowed because of the recession.
Other developers had looked at building condominiums, Driscoll said, but the property came on the market in 2009 when the condominium market was in the middle of a prolonged plunge.
Wampanoag Meadows joins Churchill & Banks’ Kettle Point development planned for the waterfront off Veterans Memorial Parkway as large East Providence rental projects originally conceived as condominiums. Kettle Point is also approved and expected to break ground soon. Driscoll agreed to buy the Wampanoag Meadows property from the Leonardo family in June 2012. The sale closed in December of that year for $3.4 million, according to the East Providence Assessors database.
The Leonardo family put the property at 1279 Wampanoag Trail on the market in 2009 after it began running out of raw material to supply the sand and gravel business they had operated there for about 20 years, said Michael Leonardo, son of the original owner and now a financial adviser.
Before sand and gravel, the Leonardos had run a grain business at the site and before that a dairy farm from 1952 to 1974.
Driscoll intends to build Wampanoag Meadows in two phases of 154 units each. The first phase should take 12-18 months to build, Driscoll said. If it breaks ground in the spring, apartments could be ready for occupancy by summer or fall of 2015.
Driscoll said rents would run from roughly $1,000 to $1,400 per month and the target demographic would be wide, from seniors to recent graduates.
At least 20 acres of the property will be kept as open space featuring 3,500 feet of walking paths and a man-made pond.
Driscoll said Wampanoag Meadows will cost at least $30 million to build and, unlike many of the large waterfront projects, he has not received Tax Increment Financing or a tax treaty from the city to make it happen.
Boyle said Wampanoag Meadows is expected to generate $822,000 annually in new property taxes; $120,000 in net new taxes when the cost of educating children and providing other public services is calculated. •

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