Is Warwick ready to grow up? Do residents want it to?

OUT WITH THE OLD: Warwick's Elizabeth Mill is being demolished to facilitate development in Warwick City Centre. / PBN PHOTO/MARK S. MURPHY
OUT WITH THE OLD: Warwick's Elizabeth Mill is being demolished to facilitate development in Warwick City Centre. / PBN PHOTO/MARK S. MURPHY

The community that would become Rhode Island’s second-largest city sprang up in a system of scattered developments, around mills and historic villages. And if it had something that could be considered a town economic center, Warwick lost it when West Warwick split away more than a century ago.

It’s now trying to reclaim it, by creating almost from scratch a downtown district that will attract both residents and businesses, through new developments designed around public transportation.

Can it work? Supporters of City Centre Warwick, as the effort is known, say it will. One of the biggest proponents, longtime Mayor Scott Avedisian, points to urban trends that show young Americans in particular are less wed to vehicles, and want options to live and work in city centers with ready access to mass transit.

They will get more for their money in the center of Warwick, which has rail connections to Providence and Boston, and an airport within steps, Avedisian argues. The city master plan that created the vision for City Centre Warwick proposes new buildings of four to five stories, without the expansive lawns of suburban developments, and pushed close together and near the street to create density.

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All of this would take place in a 95-acre zone near T.F. Green Airport. And proponents say it will not come at the expense of the established neighborhoods and villages. Warwick will not lose its quality of life by redeveloping an under-performing area, the mayor said.

“We’re the second-largest city that’s not a city,” he said. “It still feels like a small town.”

Although not then named, City Centre was part of the vision for Warwick nearly two decades ago, when city and state officials began the effort to clean up and redevelop contaminated, industrial sites near the airport, and secure funds for the InterLink train station. “We had underutilized property that was sitting there vacant,” said Avedisian.

The station, which now offers five commuter trains a day to Boston, opened in 2010. Within a few years, city officials in Warwick had revised the planning for the area between Jefferson Boulevard and Post Road, to emphasize density and mixed-use commercial and residential buildings.

New development in the area will be centered around the existing transportation hubs. It will be inviting to visitors and residents, Avedisian promises. “You want restaurants, public spaces, you want people to be able to walk, so pedestrian-friendly,” he said.

Vision Far From Reality

It’s quite a different vision than the existing reality.

The corridor along Jefferson Boulevard is primarily commercial, including industrial properties in low-slung buildings that date to the 1950s. A small, somewhat-isolated neighborhood, part of the original Hillsgrove, remains near the site of the Elizabeth Mill, a section of Warwick that dates to the 1800s.

Driving down Jefferson Boulevard, the view is an array of hotels, rental-car lots, construction companies and small offices. The lack of cohesion to the area makes it’s difficult to envision what City Centre might become.

Declining traffic at T.F. Green airport and less-than-filled train cars at the InterLink station do little to dispel skepticism from longtime residents and business owners, who say they can’t imagine it working.

Many longtime small-business owners in Warwick, such as Bob MacDonald, are skeptical of the new plans. MacDonald, a co-owner of Rick’s Auto Body in Pawtuxet Village, said the area near the airport is an industrial zone. Who would want to live there? he questions.

“I’d rather live at the mall,” MacDonald said. “The whole thing is like pie in the sky. I don’t know what they’re talking about. You’d have to tear down the whole neighborhood first.”

That’s part of the plan, to a point. The city will not use condemnation proceedings to spur construction, Avedisian said. Instead, it will create a system of streamlined permitting using the master plan that describes what it wants, along with streetscape enhancements. But the development will be handled by private companies. This requires developers who want to invest in the area to negotiate with individual land owners to acquire tracts large enough to support the kind of development envisioned in City Centre.

The process of waiting for individual developers to step forward to create a new center so far hasn’t materialized in concrete results. The most significant private development in the area to date, a restoration of a former iron works into the Ironworks Tavern and development of the Hilton Garden Inn, both occurred five years ago.

But developers who have land holdings in the area, including the company behind the Ironworks Tavern and Hilton Garden Inn, say they are ready to move ahead.

Already, there are visible signs that 2015 may be the year the vision takes hold.

Signs of Progress

Michael Integlia & Co., a developer of office, commercial and industrial buildings, announced plans in late December to demolish the historic Elizabeth Mill on Jefferson Boulevard. The old textile mill will be replaced with a modern structure that incorporates some of the original materials, including the bricks and ornate, cast-iron stairwells. The new building will cover 300,000 square feet in a four-story structure with retail on the street level and a mix of office and residential apartments on upper floors.

Integlia, which purchased the property in October 2013, began taking down the mill in late January. The company has not announced a timeline for the new construction. Integlia could not be reached for comment.

The $50 million Integlia project is critical for City Centre, said Avedisian, because it will introduce the kind of mixed-used development that he and others see as the area’s future. And it will replace a long-empty, dilapidated structure, which occupies a prominent space in Warwick directly opposite the InterLink station.

The housing is a key component to City Centre, and Avedisian said he is confident it will attract people who can see that it makes a commute to Providence or Boston feasible through mass transit. Avedisian said he is trying to get a commitment for increased service to the station, possibly through dedicated cars.

“You’ll see people who understand you can commute to Boston on the MBTA line, out of Warwick,” he said. Already, the city has a reputation for being a prime location to find affordable, single-family homes, and its rentals don’t last long.

Developers who have land holdings immediately around the transit hub say they have been waiting for the market to revive, but plan to move forward.

Joe Piscopio, a partner in Jefferson Hospitality LLC, which developed Ironworks Tavern and the Hilton Garden Inn, has spent several years assembling land in the area. His holdings now cover about 10 acres west of Jefferson Boulevard, he said, including most of the older residential area of Hillsgrove.

Development prospects in the area were stalled by the Great Recession, he said, but that doesn’t mean the area lacks development potential. “For the past eight years we’ve been at a standstill,” he said. “It was about survival, not investment.”

Behind his hotel, on a 2-acre site, he plans to construct a seven-story building for 110 rental apartments. He first will have to remediate the site of materials left behind by the former ironworks factory.

Piscopio entered the area as a landowner in 1981, when he bought the small diner on Kilvert Street, now operated as Athens Diner. Gradually, he began buying land as he met people in the neighborhood. On that side of Kilvert he now owns 2 contiguous acres, from the diner back to Blackburn Street.

The central location of the district makes it ideal for new development, he argued. He is planning another large development, which will complement what is envisioned for the area, but wouldn’t discuss the details.

City Centre “is the best part of Warwick,” Piscopio said. “It’s right in the middle of everything.” He thinks the city could accelerate the pace of development if it considered tax incentives, such as stabilization agreements that have been used in Providence.

Another landowner, D’Ambra Construction, a manufacturer of concrete and asphalt, has moved most of its operations away from its site on Jefferson Boulevard to Johnston in preparation for redevelopment. But its plans, for a 320-room hotel connected to the InterLink station, 540,000 square feet of office space, and a parking garage, have not yet been pursued, said President Michael V. D’Ambra.

The first phase, the office building, will begin once he secures enough tenants. “As soon as we feel comfortable with what we have,” he said of the timeline. He believes the area will “grow significantly.”

The city, which has a population of approximately 82,000, isn’t completely focused on City Centre for development. All around Warwick, plans for projects are moving forward, including a boutique hotel on Apponaug Cove, a renewed plan for Rhode Island Mall that would cater to outlet shops and a planned $35 million redevelopment of Pontiac Mills into rental apartments and commercial space. The project is dependent on getting $5 million in state historic-preservation tax credits.

Airport Key to Development

T.F. Green, now undertaking a significant expansion of its runway, designed to capture international and cross-country landings, is trying to counter the loss of domestic travel. It recently reported a 6 percent decline in annual traffic.

The airport’s health is critical to the area, particularly the hotels. And some of the residents who are skeptical about the potential of redevelopment say the often near-empty terminal and parking garage aren’t exactly an advertisement for the robust center depicted in the City Centre plans.

Richard Taylor, who lives in the Greenwood neighborhood being impacted by the runway expansion, said he hopes City Centre works, at least to bring in more taxes than what is already there. “I think it will work out better,” he said. “Hopefully they can bring in some businesses.”

Charles Moore, owner of the Apponaug Color and Hobby Shop, in Apponaug Village, was critical of the idea of rebranding the area around the airport as the city’s center. The area is dominated by parking lots, he said.

“It’s absurd,” Moore said.

“The center of Warwick is Apponaug, where we are. The town hall is here. Making the city center out of a parking lot is ridiculous.”

For years, he said, people have lived near the villages and shopped in the villages, or along Route 2 where the two malls and name-brand stores dominate.

“That’s an industrial section,” he said of the airport district. “No one wants to live in an industrial section.”

But Avedisian isn’t the only one who sees the vision for the new Warwick.

Scott Wolf, executive director of Grow Smart Rhode Island, said the marketing concept behind City Centre is sound.

“I think there [are] a lot of people who would want to live there,” he said. Transit-oriented development is taking off nationally, he said, attracting younger people and empty-nesters who don’t want to be reliant on autos.

The transportation hub in Warwick, with the train, bus and air segments all within walking distance, makes it a prime location. “I think that makes it very appealing,” Wolf said.

Avedisian remembers what the area looked like before the InterLink, before the moving walkway that connects passengers leaving Green to the rail and bus station. “And it’s changed dramatically,” he said. “It’s taken 15 years to create that transportation hub.”

The private development will come – it’s already begun, he said, pointing to the demolition work on the Elizabeth Mill as the most recent example.

The new Integlia building, with its mix of apartments and commercial space, could be the catalyst for the rest of the district. “Building all the things that allow people to say, you know what? I want to live there,” Avedisian said. n

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