In a display of teamwork some say was formerly lacking, the three communities of Aquidneck Island may coordinate their development plans to maximize resources and plan for future growth. The three communities of Aquidneck Island may hire a consultant to coordinate the Local Comprehensive Plans of each community – adopted, by state law, in the mid 1990s – so that each complements the other. Though the idea is still in its infancy, Portsmouth, Middletown, and Newport officials seem to agree that the three communities will have to cooperate to save the island from unplanned growth.
A 1997 study conducted by the Aquidneck Island Partnership, a coalition of conservation, governmental, and business groups, showed that of the island’s 24,547 total acres, 13,250 have been developed, as the number of building permits issued on the island has climbed steadily, from less than 1,000 in 1981 to more than 2,000 in 1997.
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”Open space on the island is disappearing; there’s a lot of residential development,” said Bob Gilstein, the town planner for Portsmouth. “And we need to do something about it.”
The partnership – whose members include the Aquidneck Island Planning Commission, the Coastal Resources Center at the University of Rhode Island, the Newport County Board of Realtors, and 10 other groups – set out to do something when it formed in 1996. Its mission then, and today, is to find issues the three communities have in common, and then find ways they can work together to deal with them.
One way is to coordinate their Local Comprehensive Plans. For example, creating contiguous parcels of open space, watershed protection, and transportation, seem to be common interests.
The Aquidneck Island Land Trust, which has protected 300 acres of land in the past four years, is considering providing funds to update and coordinate the comprehensive plans. Peter Merritt, president of the trust, said that while the communities have been thinking about the need for long-term planning for some time, they have only recently realized how much pressure their regions will face from suburban sprawl.
”This region is becoming sort of a suburb of Boston,” Merritt said. “And that’s a real change.”
Merritt added that while the land trust aims to protect 500 more acres in the next three years, “We recognize (that) as a land trust, we’re not going to be the solution here.”
Which is why there is a movement afoot to look at the island’s problems from a regional, rather than a community-by-community, basis. Though each municipality was supposed to consider how its Local Comprehensive Plan would affect its neighbors, little was done to coordinate them, said Jennifer McCann, the coordinator for the partnership. McCann and other members of the partnership estimate that the island will lose much of its charm in five years if communities fail to plan properly for future growth.
”When comprehensive plans were developed there was very little communication among the municipalities,” McCann said.
One reason for that is that each community passed its plan at a different time – Newport in 1996, Portsmouth, 1992, and Middletown, 1994 – and because each had a great deal of work to accomplish in order to get them done, said Derwent Riding, a principal planner with the Statewide planning program’s comprehensive planning division.
Riding added that if the three communities create a coordinated development plan, they could incorporate that plan into their individual Local Comprehensive Plans. For example, if they were to agree on a plan for open space preservation, each city or town could incorporate that document into its comprehensive plan, which by law must be updated every five years.
Incorporating the program into the state plan would make the communities eligible for state and federal grants to implement it, Riding said.
For that to happen, however, each town or city council would be required to approve the plan. Riding suggested that working on a proposal to preserve green space may be a good way to start planning together, since it seems to be an issue on which most people agree. Upon that foundation, she said, the communities could move to tackle more difficult problems, like transportation.
One issue each community grapples with is the availability of open space. While the land trust can buy development rights, Gilstein said, towns like Portsmouth can not afford to do so.
But while the communities may not be able to control growth, they can influence it by changing their zoning policies. For example, towns can create cluster zones, in which the homeowner trades lot size for open land in his or her development.
Another problem the Aquidneck Partnership is considering is what to do with approximately 450 acres of U.S. Navy-owned waterfront land on the west side of the island that may soon be made available to the communities. To prepare for the possibility that the Navy may get rid of property that it no longer needs, the partnership has formed a task force to examine ways to develop the land in a manner which suits the interests of the entire island.
Robert Quigley, chairman of the task force, said he expects that communities will want to see a mix of commercial and recreational use. The land is some of the best on the island, he said.
All of these efforts require cooperation, which among provincial New England cities and towns can be hard to come by. But people like Michael E. Embury, town administrator for the town of Middletown, indicate that a new cooperative spirit is afloat.
”Absolutely,” he said, when asked if the communities are working together more now than in the past. “We’re finding more and more things (on which) we can operate on a common ground.”
Added McCann: “People realize that we have five more years to plan for the future,” she said. “If we don’t, we’re going to lose what’s special about Aquidneck Island.”
