On a stretch of road where a crumbling parking lot meets a shuttered factory, the town of Bristol stands at a crossroads. On this expanse of asphalt next to the defunct Fulflex Company that once manufactured elastic for the lining of socks and the guts of golf balls, a developer wants to build new, affordable, single-family houses.
The question of whether homes should be built on an abandoned plot of industrial land is causing uproar in this seaside town, pitting neighbor against neighbor: Should Bristol eliminate industrial space to make way for more housing?
It’s a question that more suburban and rural communities in Rhode Island will have to answer, say experts, as they seek to balance Rhode Island’s severe shortage of vacant industrial land with their own pressure to support the demands of residential growth in communities. A spike in real estate prices has exacerbated the problem in recent years.
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This Wednesday (Nov. 6), town officials in Bristol will hear public debate concerning three development plans that would require an amendment of town laws to allow land currently zoned as manufacturing to be rezoned to allow residential uses. Developer FCC Inc. has filed a request for a zone change that would allow it to build affordable, single-family houses on a parking lot of the former Fulflex industrial building.
Developer M.V.P. wants a special-use permit that would allow a 30-apartment complex to be built on Franklin Street, in the heart of a manufacturing zone. And developer Caromile Construction Inc. has requested that a 5-acre parcel of land on Broad Common Road be rezoned from manufacturing, to allow about 15 market-rate houses to be built on 10,000-square-foot lots, on the fringe of the town’s industrial park.
“The thing that’s contentious is that a lot of people feel the manufacturing should be reserved for manufacturing. When you attract business you don’t put an extra burden on residents to pay higher property taxes,” said Richard Ruggiero, chairman of the Bristol Town Council. “But Bristol has become a very discouraging community for people to live in. People say to me, ‘I want my son or daughter to live in town,’ but there’s no place that they can afford.”
The town is pretty evenly split on the issue, say all involved. In some ways, the debate pits the needs of old town elders against the next generation of Bristol residents, say many.
Bristol’s planning and zoning boards are expected to rule on the matters next month, and then it will go before town council. The rulings could have long-term implications for the balance between residential and industrial development in town.
Bristol, with a population of roughly 23,000, was a fishing, boat building and manufacturing town for hundreds of years. Then, during the 1970s and 1980s, several of the companies that had been doing business in the town for decades – Kaiser, Converse, Raytheon – closed their factories and left Bristol.
Then the real estate boom hit, transforming the town into a bedroom community, because of its proximity to cities like Providence and Boston.
“It was a blue-collar town. But then more families commuting to Providence moved here, and the cost of homes has skyrocketed. It seems that everyone wants to live here now,” said Raymond Cordeiro, a Bristol councilman and lifelong resident of the town.
Now developers want to start building houses on the vacant industrial land. Opponents say converting the land to residential use will result in Bristol losing a crucial source of income in the form of its business tax base at a time when the cost of local schools and other municipal resources is going up.
The result will be an increase in property taxes, they say.
Rather than rezoning the land for new homes, many in Bristol want to attract new businesses to Bristol. Cordeiro, a chief proponent of that idea, said that one-third of the new growth in tax base in Bristol is directly related to business. He said a couple of boat building companies have expressed interest in coming to Bristol or expanding their current operations there.
“If they are looking to expand, I want to make sure that there are some properties around for them to expand to,” said Cordeiro.
But many others in the town say that if the factories were going to come back to Bristol they would have done so; most of the industrial land in question has been vacant for at least a decade. More to the point, they assert that Bristol doesn’t need more factories – it needs more homes. The average price of a home in Bristol has shot up 75 percent in one year, from $135,000 last year to about $200,000 today.
“We need to give our younger generation a chance to live in Bristol. I have two adult daughters, and they have no chance. I get calls every night from people who say ‘Paul, did you find a lot? Did you find property for me to build on?’” said Paul Caromile, a life-long Bristol resident and the developer who has proposed building about 15 market- rate homes on a plot of land abutting the town’s industrial park.
The dilemma in Bristol is a result of the town’s heavy reliance on property taxes to fund local services, and particularly education, according to Scott Wolf, executive director of Grow Smart Rhode Island, a nonprofit statewide growth management and advocacy organization. Rhode Island has the sixth highest per capita property tax burden of the 50 states, according to the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council.
And Wolf says the problem inevitably will spring up in other communities without major property tax reform in the state, as the fiscal pressures of development mount.
“This is a result of the current heavy reliance on the property tax to fund local services. That’s a big challenge all over,” said Wolf. “It puts a lot of pressure on local officials to find new enterprises for the tax base that can be a net fiscal benefit to their community.”
Residential development is often not viewed favorably by local government officials, said Wolf. Cost of community services studies show that industrial development offers a net financial gain. At the same time, the studies show that every dollar of residential tax revenue gained with the addition of new homes is lost providing services to those new residents, said Wolf.
Wolf added, “One of the real perverse side effects of our current property tax system is that it’s making a lot of communities resistant to accepting new children into their schools. They see a big price tag on their backs. A lot of town fathers and mothers hear talk about a new residential development geared to young families and they say, ‘Oh, we’d rather have commercial or industrial development.’”
But state officials don’t agree that industrial development makes for bad long-term planning. In fact, if Bristol officials decide to rezone industrial land to make way for homes, they will butt up against Rhode Island officials.
Last month, John O’Brien, chief of the state’s planning office, issued Bristol a preliminary determination letting town officials know that the proposed zone changes would not meet state approval.
“Our concern is that on a regional level, the state needs more manufacturing. The properties in question in Bristol have prime development potential for industry, and we’d prefer to see them kept in that capacity,” said O’Brien.
He added, “We have reviewed Bristol’s comprehensive plan and found it to be consistent with the state plan. When they start altering that plan, then we have some serious concerns about that.”
Bristol has yet to decide what path they will choose.
“It’s a very delicate balance, and you just want to make sure you do what’s right for the town,” said Ruggiero.
