Zoning, private roads are among site’s issues
If the mill buildings in the Lonsdale Bleachery complex had more owners like Patricia Ryan, maybe the Town of Lincoln wouldn’t need a redevelopment plan for the site.
Beyond Cash Donations: How New Forms of Giving Are Transforming Not-for-Profit Accounting
Evolving Funding Landscape for Not-for-Profits Not-for-profit organizations are being asked to do more with less,…
Learn More
Town Planner Albert Rinaldi describes the owner of Ryco Trimming Inc. as “dynamic,” saying that she has worked on the complex’s upkeep by replacing windows in her building and others, and on occasion, going so far as to pave its private roads herself.
In fact, it was Ryan who got the town involved in the Bleachery, almost by accident, by asking a simple question about potholes.
Rinaldi said the dilapidated 30-acre complex, which includes 32 old industrial buildings, was barely on the town’s radar screen before a charette hosted jointly by communities in the Blackstone Valley. At that meeting, Rinaldi said, Ryan asked if he could provide any assistance in fixing the potholes on the road leading up to her property.
When he asked the town’s Department of Public Works to look into the issue, Rinaldi said, he was told there was nothing the town could do because all the roads on the site were private, dating back to a time when a single owner controlled the entire complex.
“From a town’s perspective, we have tax-paying residents that own businesses there, but they’re not getting any services there because we don’t plow private roads … and we don’t do any maintenance,” Rinaldi said. “We can’t even encourage people to access these properties, because there is no access to them.”
The town applied for a grant from the R.I. Economic Development Corporation to draft a redevelopment plan for the site and hired Pare Engineering to do it.
In October 2005, Pare came back with a plan for a mixed-use redevelopment, with plenty of public recreational space, financed through public and private investment.
The plan calls for the project to be overseen by a specially created redevelopment agency.
The town would need to attract as much as $34 million in private investment, the plan showed, but besides turning the rundown site into a strong economic engine, the project could yield Lincoln as much as $252,246 more per year in new tax revenue.
The Lincoln Town Council recently established a subcommittee to examine how the redevelopment agency would be set up and what its responsibilities would be.
Rinaldi said that the complex would be the perfect home for mixed-use redevelopment, with retail on the buildings’ ground floors and offices and housing on the upper floors. It would attract a whole other demographic to the town, he added.
“I see it attracting a lot of younger people, because of the condo loft type of living, but also because of the fact that they could easily walk outside of their condo and hop right on the bike path,” Rinaldi said. “They could also get a canoe or kayak and go up and down the Blackstone [River].”
But among the key issues that still have to be looked at is zoning, Council President Jeremiah “Jay” O’Grady told Providence Business News in an e-mail interview.
As the area is currently zoned, no mixing of residential and commercial uses is allowed, so the building owners would have to seek variances. It’s an issue the town is seeking to address through village-style zoning, which O’Grady said he hoped would be voted on soon.
“Many Blackstone Valley towns, like Lincoln, are really collections of mill villages which sprung up around the textile factories that remain the dominant feature – both historically and architecturally – of the region,” O’Grady said.
“A creative reuse of the Lonsdale Bleachery complex would transform a deteriorating and underperforming asset into an economic engine,” he said, “increasing our tax base, our access to the Blackstone River and our appreciation for what our ancestors built. It also represents a way to spur economic development without consuming more of our increasingly limited green space.”
Lincoln still needs to identify funding sources for its portion of the investment, and attract owners willing to make the commitment necessary for the Bleachery’s success, O’Grady added. He said he would be willing to explore the use of tax-incremental financing, so the cost of the improvements would not spill over to the rest of the town’s taxpayers.
But for people like Pat Ryan, the success of the complex is important to the success of their businesses, Rinaldi said.
Ryan, who did not immediately respond to a request for an interview from the PBN, is the owner of the building where her restaurant is located, and through the years has been looking to bring in various uses.
Most recently, she expressed interest in bringing in a restaurant. It’s an ideal location for one, she told Rinaldi, because of the building’s proximity to the river.
But even if she gets the necessary variances from the town’s zoning board, she still has to contend with those potholes, Rinaldi said.
“People would have come in Hummers to get there,” he said. “It’s not somewhere that you’d want to take a date right now.”
