Waterfront bill would expand CRMC’s jurisdiction

Water-dependent business advocacy groups, business owners and the R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council last week urged support for state legislation opposed by Providence officials that would allow CRMC to supersede waterfront zoning decisions made by municipalities.
A House version of The Working Waterfront Protection Act was debated before the Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, which did not act on the measure. Bill sponsor Rep. David Caprio, D-Narragansett, said it’s an effort to preserve the current uses at all working ports of Rhode Island, including those in Providence and Galilee.
The bill “not only recognizes the importance of them in the history of our state, but also the long-term economic impact that they had and hopefully will continue to have,” Caprio said.
The Providence Working Waterfront Alliance, Rhode Island Fishermen’s Alliance and the CRMC have voiced support for the legislation. Providence Director of Planning and Development Thomas E. Deller opposes the bill.
Much of the March 3 hearing was focused on Providence’s efforts to study and possibly rezone about 244 acres of the Allens Avenue industrial corridor as mixed use. Addressing the committee, Deller urged legislators to halt any action until three waterfront studies – the city, state and CRMC are now funding separate studies – were completed.
“I would also argue that CRMC already has regulations for 200 feet from the water’s edge and already has control over this,” he said. “There’s no need to create a new ordinance, organization or set of rules. It seems like this is an effort to expand CRMC’s powers to circumvent local zoning.” Patrick T. Conley, an attorney and developer who was granted a variance for nonindustrial uses at his Allens Avenue Providence Piers building, used harsher language, calling the bill “superfluous,” “overbroad” and “horrendous.”
“What we’re trying to do is shore up and protect businesses that maybe should not survive, that are maybe obsolete,” he said.
If the city makes Allens Avenue a mixed-use zone, Conley plans to build a parking garage and hotel there. Later this month, he’s scheduled to go in front of the Providence Zoning Board of Review to request variances allowing parking and outdoor seating at his Dockside restaurant.
But because the bill would change CRMC’s statewide reach, last week’s debate was broader in scope than the battle that has been brewing in Providence since late 2007, when the Providence Working Waterfront Alliance formed in an effort to stop potential rezoning along Allens Avenue.
Rep. Michael A. Rice, D-South Kingstown, said Rhode Island’s fishing industry is in “great trouble” and such a bill could help them. Nonwater-dependent uses in industrial waterfronts around the state have been driving up the value of the land and pushing water-dependent uses out, he said.
Newport County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Keith Stokes, a longtime R.I. Economic Development Corporation board member, last week said the legislation is part of a larger, statewide “jobs” issue.
“In the economy that we’re in, with a 10.3 percent unemployment rate, I can’t tell you how important it is for us to preserve and build upon our last truly competitive industrial-based economy in this state, our marine-based economy,” Stokes said. The bill’s opponents argue that industrial-use zoning – especially in Providence – has not created enough jobs and economic growth.
“We zoned that area in 1994 [as] heavy industrial uses and nothing has happened,” Deller said of the Allens Avenue corridor that could be rezoned. “We need something to happen.”
In a letter, CRMC Executive Director Grover J. Fugate wrote that waterfront properties that can still be used for water-dependent businesses are “extremely limited” in Rhode Island.
“Changes in transportation networks will make these areas even more important to the state in the future,” he said. “There is a realization occurring that for many situations water-born shipping is far more economical and environmentally favorable than the traditional land-based methods.”
That includes short-sea shipping, a water-based regional shipping method that could cut down on tractor-trailer traffic, added Rep. Gregory J. Schadone, D-North Providence. “A lot of corporations are reluctant to invest because they don’t know the future of the waterfront.”
Sen. William A. Walaska, D-Warwick, introduced a companion bill in the Senate. He’s also co-chair of the 12-member R.I. General Assembly commission created in January to study Rhode Island’s ports. That commission is scheduled to meet for the first time later this month.
Walaska said the CRMC bill is an attempt to start a conversation at the state level about Rhode Island’s ports because the ports should benefit the entire state.
But Rep. Thomas C. Slater, D-Providence, opposes the bill because it would create a “financial burden if … Providence can’t develop the port the way they want to develop it.” •