The view from the east bank of the Seekonk River is lovely: the sprawling green
of Riverside and Swan Point cemeteries; the landscaped Butler Hospital grounds;
the wooded slopes of Blackstone Park.
Few people get to see it, however, because that part of the East Providence waterfront is desolate: abandoned industrial sites, oil terminals, and barren land. Farther south, the imbalance is reversed, with tidy little houses, a golf course and a park on the east side, and tank farms and the Port of Providence on the west.
Land in both cities is at a premium. Waterfront property is a treasure. But for years, hundreds of acres have sat vacant on both sides of the Seekonk River because they’re polluted, and the cost and logistics of redeveloping them seemed prohibitive.
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Yet now, so-called “brownfields” are gaining new appeal. With suburbs resisting high-density development, and expensive infrastructure costs in outlying towns, neglected urban land looks like a better bet, said Terrence Gray, assistant director for air, waste and compliance at the state Department of Environmental Management.
Meanwhile, brownfields redevelopment itself is becoming more financially viable, with new pollutant “capping” and cleanup technologies, a 2002 expansion of the federal brownfields law, a growing market for urban living, and state and local efforts to spur redevelopment.
“My gut feeling is that we’re starting to turn the corner,” Gray said.
The biggest wave of redevelopment now involves mills, Gray said, because state historic tax credits have made them more attractive. There’s Rising Sun in Olneyville, the Ashton Mill in Cumberland, and now the Royal Mills in West Warwick – all involving DEM-supervised cleanups as well as major renovations, but all seen as well worth the investment.
With no tax credits and none of the mills’ architectural appeal, the tank farms and general industrial wastelands along the Providence and Seekonk rivers haven’t attracted developers in the same way. In Providence, former Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. had talked of extending the elegance of Waterplace Park to the south, but now it’s unclear how much of this vision is feasible.
In East Providence, however, hope is now in sight.
Last year, the city adopted a bold, ambitious plan for more than 300 acres of its waterfront, aiming to carve out a “new city” with public spaces, marinas, restaurants, as many as 2,500 housing units, and extensive office and commercial space. Vast and scenic, the waterfront “holds the single greatest potential for East Providence for attracting new business and jobs,” the plan says.
The impact on the city’s tax base, said Planning Director Jeanne Boyle, could be as much as $2 billion. And if a “critical mass” of waterfront development can be built, she said, the Providence and Pawtucket waterfronts could also benefit.
“It does have a spinoff effect,” Boyle said.
To facilitate redevelopment and ensure that all projects fit within the city’s vision, East Providence created a Waterfront District Commission with broad authority to grant any required permits and to help developers get financing.
The commission became active July 1, and already it has a project to consider: the Ross Commons Condominiums, a 54-unit luxury complex proposed by The Peregrine Group and Kirkbrae Development for a brownfields site off Roger Williams Avenue.
Peregrine’s office building abuts the site, and part of the plan is to expand next door. Principal Colin Kane said it’s taken eight months to prepare the cleanup proposal and get DEM approval, but now the project is ready to go, with construction slated to begin as soon as September. The condos are expected to sell for $225,000 to $300,000, he said (except for six “affordable” units), and even without advertising, interest in them is already “very, very strong.”
A far bigger project, on the former Washburn Wire/Ocean State Steel site, is also well under way: East Pointe, a 27-acre mixed-use project led by New York-based GeoNova Development, with a projected cost of more than $200 million. Set up like a waterfront “village,” the project would include single-family houses, townhouses, condos, shops and restaurants, a marina, a park and public access to the water.
Unlike the Ross Commons site, where the pollution is relatively minor, the East Pointe parcel is heavily contaminated in some areas from decades of heavy metal processing. Heavy metals can leach into the groundwater, so covering the soil with protective fabric and topsoil is not enough. But that’s why GeoNova stepped in.
The New York firm has the license to a molecular bonding technology that contains the metals and keeps them from leaching, Boyle said. That means that rather than having to remove all the soil, the developer can take out the worst, then treat what remains, making it safe enough to be capped.
The cleanup is nevertheless extremely expensive, but East Providence is helping to pay for it, with a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and a $3 million HUD loan obtained by the city on GeoNova’s behalf.
Mary Voce, one of the principals of GeoNova, said the process has taken time, but the firm expects to have completed the cleanup and gotten all the permits to proceed with redevelopment by the end of the year.
“I’m surprised to see how quickly these developments are coming,” Boyle said. “This is really a transformation that’s going on, so it is exciting to be part of it.”
But reclaiming such a vast stretch of polluted land is only possible, Boyle said, because the state is a strong partner in the initiative, and federal support is also strong. The 2002 update of the federal brownfields law – in which U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee was instrumental – has also made a big impact, she said, because it refocused attention on clearly identifying the problem with a parcel so it could be solved.
