Sale of former nightclub disputed by city residents

A Providence waterfront property bought by Rhode Island as part of a December 2000 Interstate 195 right-of-way purchase is now, with a sale being planned, the focus of a dispute between city residents and state officials.
The two-parcel property has been home to several nightclubs, first Shooters and later Bootleggers. Just south of the new I-195 in the Fox Point neighborhood, the land sits outside the city’s hurricane barrier and has about 1,700 feet of open coastline, said Rick Kalunian, chief real estate specialist for the R.I. Department of Transportation.
The state has intended to sell the two-acre property all along, said DOT Chief Property Management Officer Dan Clark. It was purchased with Federal Highway Administration grants as part of the I-195 construction. Proceeds will go back into that project.
The property was used as a staging ground during I-195 construction and is no longer needed. The DOT will sell it at auction pending an appraisal, Clark said. No date has been set for the sale and the former owner has the right to match the highest bid, Clark said.
But an ordinance proposed by City Councilman Seth Yurdin (D-Ward 1) could rezone the land as “public space.” That would stifle the sale, at least until the Providence Comprehensive Master Plan neighborhood meetings are held for the area during June.
At a City Council Ordinance Committee hearing on March 3, East Siders and preservationists spoke in support of Yurdin’s zoning change.
Fox Point Neighborhood Association President Daisy Schnepel urged city and state leaders to stall the sale. A “growing movement” is advocating that the land be used as public space that could be connected to India Point Park, she said.
“The city should be able to weigh in on the use of this property, instead of giving DOT carte blanche to sell the property to a private developer,” she said.
Friends of India Point Park President David Riley said the city should play a “defensive game.”
“If you sell the waterfront, it’s gone,” he said. “They’re not making more of it.”
The Shooters property ended up under DOT control as part of a six-parcel, $4.7 million purchase from Chestnut Properties Inc., said DOT’s Kalunian in an interview.
“In 2000, we needed to purchase all of the right-of-way in real estate to construct the new I-195 and included in the area were four vacant lots that were used basically as parking lots for the Shooters nightclub,” he said. Those four parcels were appraised for $2.5 million.
The two parcels on which Shooters was located weren’t needed for the construction, he said, but a DOT operating procedure required that the department appraise abutting parcels owned by the same seller. That included estimating the value loss that would be caused by nearby construction, Kalunian said.
“We anticipated that for the Shooters property, we were going to have to pay $1 million [in damages] for a property that we weren’t even going to own,” Kalunian said, “because we diminished its value.”
But Chestnut Properties disputed that damage appraisal, saying that during the four years of I-195 construction the Shooters property would be “useless,” Kalunian said.
“We were going to face a potential lawsuit over the amount of money that we were paying,” he continued, “and we made a business decision to acquire the whole piece. If you do the math, it cost us about $2.2 million to buy the property, we got use of it for five years and now we’re hoping to sell it at an amount that’s above that.”
But the coveted waterfront access might be more important than a quick sale, said an estimated 15 people who spoke at the March 3 public hearing. Many said they were worried that a high-rise condo would be built.
“I think indeed that we must make sure that the buildings are not higher than 35 feet,” said Fox Point resident Carolyn Smith. “We need our sun and we need to see the water. And everybody in Providence certainly needs the ability to enjoy the river and the bay.”
A date has not been set for the City Council’s vote on the ordinance. Clark said the DOT opposes the zoning change. •