The fate of a prime parcel of 7.5 acres along the Blackstone River in downtown Pawtucket, proposed site of a Hampton Inn that was never built, remains in limbo as the hotel developer seeks more time to start construction and the city mulls taking the land back.
“It would have been a smashing success,” Michael D. Cassidy, director of planning and development for the city, said of the hotel project that would anchor a redeveloped waterfront and include office space and a restaurant. “Pawtucket would have looked very different today with that hotel.”
But the $20 million project, first proposed at least nine years ago, is not dead yet.
The developer, Carpionato Properties Inc. in Johnston, recently asked the Pawtucket City Council to negotiate an extension of its agreement with the city. The developer has not indicated how long an extension it needs, according to Cassidy. Carpionato missed a July 10 deadline when its agreement with the city required that the first 100 hotel rooms be finished, complete with certificates of occupancy. So far, earth-moving and some clean up have taken place at the site.
The City Council is scheduled to meet with its attorney by mid-September and render a decision on the developer’s request, Cassidy said.
The developer’s agreement with the city, however, includes a reverter clause that allows Pawtucket to take back the land if the July 10 deadline were missed. Cassidy said he does not know what the City Council will decide to do but, if the city takes back the land, he expects the city will seek proposals from other developers to resurrect the long-stalled project.
The site is unique. The land slopes steeply down to the river in what Cassidy called three separate plateaus and is located on Division Street, a main artery near Interstate 95 and only a mile or so from the Providence border and Blackstone Boulevard. A car dealership, including the former Pierce Chevrolet, was located there for many years.
The steep slope means the parcel is larger than it looks. “What you see on Division Street is a very small portion of it,” Cassidy said.
What makes the site particularly special to Pawtucket is that the city owns an abutting 7-acre parcel that runs along the river and connects to the state pier, which Cassidy said the city intends to incorporate along with the hotel site in its long-range plans for waterfront development. Public access to the river will be part of the waterfront improvements, he added.
Plans for the hotel call for 175 to 200 rooms in the medium price range of $99 to $150 per night with the restaurant and office building of 20,000 square feet constructed as separate structures.
The cataclysmic events of Sept. 11, 2001, may have contributed to the tortuous course of this project.
The first potential developer had financing arranged with a Manhattan firm located at the World Trade Center and claimed that the financing fell through when the firm literally was demolished in the 9/11 attack. Carpionato then took over, signing a purchase and sales agreement for the land on July 10, 2005, and pledging to have the first 100 hotel rooms ready for occupancy in four years, according to Cassidy. Legal owner of the land is listed as Division Hotel Group LLC. The city agreed to transfer the land for just $1, with the understanding that no real estate tax breaks would be given in the future.
“I’m very disappointed that we were not able to see this happen,” Cassidy said of the hotel construction. “The city worked very hard to get this done.” By January 2007, he said, “the permitting was all done, the coastal permits, the zoning, the riverfront approval, it was all done.”
John Kokot, of Carpionato Properties Inc., project leader for the Hampton Inn proposal in Pawtucket and general manager of the Crowne Plaza Hotel Providence-Warwick, pointed to the economy and the hotel market as reasons why the project stalled.
Kokot could not say whether Carpionato is abandoning the project.
Richard Kazarian, chairman of the Pawtucket Riverfront Commission, said his group is “deeply disappointed” by lack of action on the hotel plan, but at the same time the current situation does give the city “a rare opportunity” to reconsider decisions made a decade ago. Commission members are “fully prepared to explore future development options,” Kazarian said.
Cassidy praised the developer for the quality of its other commercial construction projects in Rhode Island and its excellent record of maintaining those structures. The Johnston company developed Crowne Plaza Hotel and the Holiday Inn & Suites in Warwick.
The company also played key roles in the development of the Whole Foods Market and Boston Market buildings at University Heights in Providence and, in January 2008, amid much controversy, demolished the dilapidated home of the former Providence Fruit & Warehouse Co. near downtown Providence.
Should the city choose to take back the Division Street parcel, Cassidy said the hotel project will be re-evaluated and he expects the land will be “put back out on the market” for proposals from other developers. The public and the Pawtucket Riverfront Commission, chaired by city resident Richard Kazarian, will be involved again in the process, he said.
The Pawtucket Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization whose focus is economic development, in a prepared statement released by Executive Director Thomas A. Mann Jr. urged the city to take back the Division Street land.
“Because The Pawtucket Foundation has no official understanding of the current developer’s intentions for the stalled hotel site, we would urge the city of Pawtucket to deny any extension of the performance period and immediately take control of the property,” the foundation said. •
