O’Neill Properties Group, the owner of Portsmouth’s Carnegie Abbey Club, has bought 44.5 acres of “environmentally scarred” property along the town’s waterfront and plans to transform it into The Newport Club, a mixed-use marina village.
The property, which is known as Hood Marina, was sold to O’Neill Properties by Ted Hood last December for $14.1 million. Hood bought the property in the 1980s from the U.S. Navy. The past uses by the Navy are the cause for the environmental damage.
“The Navy did a tremendous amount of cleanup, but we found other spots that need remediation,” said Edward T. Lopes Jr., senior vice president in New England for the Pennsylvania developer. “It’s not easy, but it’s the type of remediation we have experience in, and we understand the areas that are involved.”
John “Jay” Gowell, the lawyer who represented Hood in the sale, said that this project is what Hood wanted to see done with the property.
“His vision for this land was to turn it into the finest and largest marinas on the East Coast, and since the 1980s, he’s worked hard to put the permitting together,” Gowell said. “He’s been trying to find the right developer, and O’Neill Properties demonstrated that they were the ones who could complete this vision.”
The development is also in line with what the Town of Portsmouth and the Aquidneck Island Planning Commission envisioned in the West Side master plan, which was completed in 2005.
The Newport Club is to include a 1,495-slip marina, 120,000 square feet for retail shops, restaurants, cafés and other commercial uses, a public boardwalk along the water and 988 housing units – a mixture of condominiums and rental units, with 10 percent required to be affordable housing.
“The town is generally enthusiastic,” said Bob Gilstein, the town planner for Portsmouth. “We had to create a new set of land use regulations to consider the proposal, but we particularly like the economic benefits that will come from tourism,” he added. “And Portsmouth is the largest center of boat building and boat repair, so having a marina there creates the ability for expansion for the marine service industry in our area.”
