Green oasis in midst of urban colors

With 19,367 residents living in an area of 1.29 square miles, Central Falls is hardly a place where you would expect to find Boy Scouts roasting hot dogs over a campfire.
But it’s happening this summer. River Island Community Park, 6.24 acres of recreational space beside the Blackstone River, has become Rhode Island’s first urban campground. The city park, just off High Street, features a footbridge that leads to a small island. Scouts, outing clubs and other organized groups are now invited to pitch their tents and spend the night at the site.
Once you’ve crossed the bridge, Central Falls disappears from view. You’re surrounded by chirping birds, shade-casting oaks and the sun-dappled river. You might think you’re in the New Hampshire woods, but you’re really just 10 minutes from the Statehouse.
“We’ve been searching for years to find some land where people could camp along the river,” said Robert Billington, president of the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council, one of the groups that helped create the campground. “We always thought it would be in Lincoln or Cumberland. Now we’ve found we can use this beautiful underutilized island forest. It’s a wonderful resource for people living in an urban area.”
How did a campground pop up in Central Falls? It didn’t happen overnight. River Island Community Park is a former mill site that evolved into green space over 15 years. Today the small park is often lauded as an example of design work that incorporates both recreational facilities and natural landscapes.
Fire destroyed the long-vacant Spintex Mill in 1995, leaving behind a two-acre site littered with rubble and contaminated by industrial waste. A year later the city seized the parcel as a tax foreclosure. A revitalization project then got underway. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency provided funding to assess contamination at the site. Contractors finished the clean-up in 1998. A short time later the state Department of Environmental Management provided the city with a second nearby parcel, the undeveloped four-acre island for which the park is named, separated from the mainland by the old mill sluice. By 2000 the city was ready to hire a design firm to create the park.
The Gifford Design Group, a landscape architecture firm in Cumberland, transformed the mainland parcel into a recreation area that features a walking and running track; a small playing field; a paved promenade; and a field house that includes bathrooms, a storage room, and a concession stand.
“When we looked at the site, we saw that a regulation track was not going to fit, so we went with the next best thing, a smaller, more informal track,” says George H. Gifford III, the company president and chief landscape architect. “It has become very popular with residents from the nearby elderly-housing complex.”
The green lawn in the center of the track is used by junior soccer leagues that don’t require a full-size field, and by neighborhood children playing pick-up games.
The concrete promenade beside the track includes several features that recall the city’s history as a bustling manufacturing hive during the Industrial Revolution. The black metal fence along the far side has an antique look, and follows the foundation of the mill building that once stood on the site. The promenade benches have no backs, so that a person can sit and watch a game on the field, or turn around and look out over the mill sluice and river. Trees are planted here and there to add some shade. Funding for the project trickled in from several sources through the years. The EPA provided $30,000 to plan the cleanup. From 1998 to 2002 the city received a Community Block Development grant of $550,000 from the federal government, money that was used to remove contaminated earth, trash and rubble. The state later provided about $300,000 to build the recreation facilities.
The idea for the campground emerged early this year, at meetings of a community group known as Leadership Central Falls. The organization – which includes city employees, residents, business leaders and others – holds brainstorming sessions to find ways to improve the city. Craig Horton, a city police officer, suggested camping weekends on the island.
Two people took on the task: James Toomey, a Bryant University student and a staffer at the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council, and Sebastian Zeuleta, a Central Falls teen who has taken on several public-service projects as part of his initiation into the Eagle Scouts.
“We saw the island campground as a perfect example of sustainable tourism,” says Toomey. “That’s tourism development that pays attention to an area’s culture and heritage, as well as safe environmental practices.”
The scouts were the first to make use of the facility. The campground is now available for use by organized groups that obtain a permit from the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation. What’s more, they soon will be able to apply online. •

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