RhodeMap for state won’t focus on finding a ‘big fix’

ALL THINGS EQUAL: R.I. Division of Planning Associate Director Kevin Flynn says RhodeMap RI will address the “issue of social equity.” / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
ALL THINGS EQUAL: R.I. Division of Planning Associate Director Kevin Flynn says RhodeMap RI will address the “issue of social equity.” / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

From the outside, it seems Rhode Island officials have been working on a new comprehensive plan for land use and economic development for ages, or at least since they finished the last plan.
In reality, R.I. Department of Administration Associate Director Kevin Flynn has been working on the plan, known as RhodeMap RI, since 2012, after winning a federal Housing and Urban Development grant to fund it. Since then, the project has merged with the new quadrennial economic-development strategy reset required by post-38 Studios Commerce Corporation reforms.
Although there are a few economic plans sitting on shelves in state offices, Flynn says the scope of RhodeMap RI makes it different.

PBN: Are you nearing the finish line on RhodeMap?
FLYNN: It is a three-year process and before that started we applied for the grant money. The finish line for the whole project is February 2015, so we are in the homestretch. We have a couple of different deadlines. The program is not just the economic-development plan. The rest involves a new housing plan and establishment of a stronger growth-center strategy for the state.
Those three pieces are the major deliverables by end of this process. We have slightly accelerated on economic development because we have a statutory mandate to produce a plan for the General Assembly and incoming administration by the end of October. The piece that Commerce has worked on with the Rhode Island Foundation has really been to get the involvement of the business community in the drafting of the plan. We have had a different focus, more on housing and growth centers.

PBN: What are some of those common themes between the community piece and business piece? FLYNN: The broadest has been, we are not going to have a single silver bullet to solve the economic problems of the state. … One big project, or out-of-state company, is not going to be a panacea. It will take patience and growing our own strengths and doing perhaps some attraction from outside and looking at how we go about making economic decisions – and not looking for a single, big fix. Other themes emerging, in no particular order, include access to capital for entrepreneurs, either venture capital or traditional capital in urban communities that have struggled for investment in the past; workforce-training issues … ; the sense we have great bones here that we need to build upon, such as a capital city with a great downtown; and building off of the history of manufacturing, design and marine trades. The other major overarching issue is the demographic changes in the state. That includes an aging workforce with baby boomers such as myself getting closer to retirement and an old manufacturing workforce. There is a need to find people to take those jobs and they are not the same manufacturing jobs we used to have. Finally there are the changing ethnic and racial demographics. … We have some wide disparities in educational attainment and income that we have to deal with.

PBN: How different will this be from other state strategic plans produced over the years?
FLYNN: I can’t have a perfect answer to that, but we hope the extensive outreach we have done and constituencies we have tried to reach, who are not the typical ones, will have developed a consensus that this is how the state needs to move forward. It will ultimately be in the hands of the new governor, whoever that turns out to be, and the General Assembly to move initiatives forward.

PBN: Do you get the sense that Rhode Islanders are now receptive to building growth and population growth?
FLYNN: There is a greater acceptance of growth, but I think one of the ways this will be different from other plans, is we are not going to just talk about in general the things we need to do. We are also going to talk about what places … make the most sense for development to happen. It is obviously a mixed bag. We have to look at the infrastructure, transit and transportation. The fact that we have train service to Warwick that is driving Warwick Center, a plan that would give that community something different in scale and density than it has had before. North Kingstown is working on similar initiatives at Wickford Junction. We are targeting five specific communities with different growth challenges, from urban, to rural, to suburban strip areas, to parts of state with good highway, water and sewer, but not development right now. We don’t make all the decisions for local land use. We can provide guidance, but we have 39 cities and towns with councils, mayors and administrators.

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PBN: Are there new areas this plan focuses on that haven’t really been addressed before?
FLYNN: We have not just looked at the plan as a rising tide will lift every boat. There are urban areas that are going to need more focus and job training. We are also serious about how the state can be a more active player to assist communities that may not have that capacity on their own. Only a few have redevelopment agencies and for complicated things like Tax Increment Financing, the state could take on a mentoring role. •

INTERVIEW
Kevin Flynn
POSITION: Associate director of the Division of Planning in the R.I. Department of Administration
BACKGROUND: A South Shore native whose father drove buses part time, Flynn moved from the Bay State to the Ocean State to attend the University of Rhode Island and has remained here since. After graduate school, Flynn spent 24 years in the Cranston planning department before becoming a statewide planner.
EDUCATION: Bachelor’s in history from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, 1975; master’s in community planning from the University of Rhode Island, 1980
FIRST JOB: Washing the interior of buses in Weymouth, Mass.
RESIDENCE: Cranston
AGE: 60

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