If park is built, will manufacturers come?

BUILD TO FIT: Quonset Business Park is home to companies such as Toray Plastic (America), but R.I. Commerce Corporation Executive Director Marcel A. Valois says future plans don’t mean replicating such a large park. / COURTESY TORAY PLASTICS (AMERICA) INC.
BUILD TO FIT: Quonset Business Park is home to companies such as Toray Plastic (America), but R.I. Commerce Corporation Executive Director Marcel A. Valois says future plans don’t mean replicating such a large park. / COURTESY TORAY PLASTICS (AMERICA) INC.

Does Rhode Island need a new industrial park?
Although demand for industrial properties remains soft, state leaders believe a shortage of premium, pad-ready and permitted sites may be contributing to the problem and could prevent manufacturers from locating here in the future.
To boost the advanced manufacturing sector, the state’s new economic plan being finalized by the R.I. Commerce Corporation recommends funding “to acquire, permit and deliver a fully functioning business park.”
Where in the state the new park should be located or how it would be financed are not addressed in the report, a business-centered piece of the larger RhodeMap RI plan scheduled to be completed by February. Other sections of RhodeMap focus on land use and will likely narrow down the best candidates for industrial expansion.
R.I. Commerce Corporation Executive Director Marcel A. Valois cautioned that a new park was one of many recommendations and any discussions are only in the exploratory phase, but the Commerce Corporation board of directors in late June received a presentation on the facility needs of today’s advanced manufacturers.
“We need to look at the inventory that over the next 10 years would support the growth of companies in Rhode Island who need larger footprints than what we typically have available in older buildings and neighborhoods,” Valois said. “Around the state we no longer have a robust inventory: Highland Corporate Park is full, Quonset Point has less than 300 acres available for lease. If you look around the state and say ‘where would you locate a company needing 100,000 to 300,000 square feet,’ there aren’t many options.”
Valois said Commerce RI had recently been approached by companies looking for modern space in the 200,000 to 300,000-square-foot range and had limited options to show executives.
Quonset Business Park is the leading industrial park in the state and one of Rhode Island’s economic success stories, but Valois said future plans do not necessarily mean trying to replicate something so large.
Multiple smaller parks in different areas may prove to be a better solution.
Expansion of Rhode Island’s suburban business campuses has become a controversial subject recently, and the state economic-development plan pairs its recommendation for a new park with the need to encourage industrial development in urban areas. Whether the two objectives are in tension with each other is up for debate.
Stanley Weiss, a Providence developer and member of the Commerce Corporation board of directors, supports an urban focus and recently questioned the 50-year Quonset Business Park lease to Irish sandwich-maker Greencore for 15 acres, with a 25 percent job-creation discount.
“Rhode Island isn’t Texas, and you can’t roll out the office-park concept and try to fit it to an area where population densities” aren’t a match, Weiss said. “It was troubling that a big amount of land was leased to a sandwich maker where 80 or 90 percent of the workers will earn $9 to $11 per hour. How are they going to get there? It makes more sense to build in locations where populations are.”
Donated to the state by the Navy after it closed its base there, Quonset has 270 acres of land still available out of the 1,863 developable acres it started with. QDC estimates 9,500 people work in the park and 3,500 new jobs have been created there since 2005.
Quonset officials attribute their success in attracting businesses to a streamlined permitting process that promises companies no more than 90 days from application to groundbreaking.
The park has also benefited from millions of dollars in federally funded infrastructure improvements.
So is the demand needed to fill a new park and the numerous existing underutilized industrial properties out there in Rhode Island?
“Not really – building is expensive and you don’t have a lot of people looking to build new, even though the available buildings out there are not what they are looking for,” said Neil Amper, vice president of Capstone Properties in Providence. “But having said that, I think creating another park can’t hurt because you can’t assume no one is ever going to come. If you create a new park and plan it properly, that is a marketing tool for the state that might create demand that isn’t here now.” According to CB Richard Ellis New England, the vacancy rate for Rhode Island industrial land in 2013 was 9.03 percent, down from 9.93 percent in 2012.
While Rhode Island hasn’t built a new industrial park recently, in Fall River the new SouthCoast Life Science and Technology Park has added 300 pad-ready sites with 30-day local permitting.
Scott Gibbs, president of the Rhode Island Economic Development Foundation, a nonprofit that runs business parks (and Valois’ former employer), said while there may be a number of vacant, old industrial properties across the state, options for large sites are few and far to come by.
“I strongly concur there is a need for a new master-planned park,” Gibbs said. “In order for us to be competitive in retaining and attracting growth, we have to offer a diversified portfolio of location options.”
As younger employees have become increasingly attracted to urban workplaces, companies have begun looking for less-isolated facilities in closer proximity to entertainment and amenities, Gibbs said, prompting business parks to change.
Especially on the West Coast, new parks now often feature commercial strips, recreational areas and even homes close to offices and distribution centers.
Quonset has tried to move in this direction by developing the Gateway section of the park with retail and hotel.
Gerald Lavallee, senior vice president at CB Richard Ellis New England, said the pace of industrial leasing has been picking up and the Interstate 95 corridor south of exit 7 would be a good candidate for a park if it could be connected to utilities.
“The challenge is infrastructure,” Lavalle said about southwestern Rhode Island. “That area is fairly limited in utilities, water and sewer. In northern Rhode Island there isn’t a lot of land left not encumbered by wetlands, cemeteries or uneven topography.”
Looking ahead, Valois said immediate steps include determining whether the Commerce Corporation is the right entity to work on industrial real estate.
As examples of areas in the state Commerce might examine for potential development, Valois mentioned Tiverton Industrial Park and land around Exit 5 off I-95 in West Greenwich. •

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