The Quonset Development Corporation and developer New Boston Development Partners LLC last week unveiled a revised plan for the proposed Gateway project in the North Kingstown business park that aims to address issues raised by the community, advocacy groups and the state board overseeing its planning.
Submitted to the R.I. Statewide Planning Commission last Tuesday, the new proposal looks to develop more fully the mixed-use property than the previous design by incorporating more pedestrian walkways, green space and multistory buildings, and shrinking the size while altering the placement of the big-box stores that had drawn the ire of residents and other critics.
Saul Kaplan, executive director of the R.I. Economic Development Corporation and chairman of the Quonset Development Corporation board of directors, said that the new proposal also better fits the needs of the state’s economy by upping the amount of office space in the project. The revised plan reduces the planned retail space by 21,000 square feet and increases the space for office and research-and-development businesses by 160,000 square feet. Some of that space will be included in a two-story building facing Post Road.
Under the previous proposal, 1,750 permanent jobs were projected for the site, with 800 coming from the office component and 850 coming from retail.
Under the new proposal. more than 2,100 jobs are projected for the Gateway. A majority of those will come from the project’s office component, with 1,200 planned for the Class A space. The retail portion of the project is projected to create 750 jobs under the new design.
The office space will be marketed to companies in the so-called “innovation economy” – industry sectors including health care and digital media that have been targeted by Kaplan and other economic development officials as crucial to growing the state’s economy.
While Kaplan had endorsed the previous proposal, he said that the current iteration of the Gateway will be able to provide much more value for the community and the state as a whole.
“Having 400,000 square feet of Class A office space is going to be a big boost for our state’s economic development efforts,” Kaplan said. “The retail is an important part of the mix; it provides a nice amenity package to the Quonset business park as well as the community. … We just wanted a better mix.”
The $144 million, 72.5-acre Gateway project has been one of the most high-profile projects slated for the business park. After several years of planning and soliciting proposals from numerous developers, Quonset’s board of directors in 2005 settled on New Boston, citing the firm’s financial capabilities and experience with redevelopment projects.
But the proposal put forth late last year sparked a wave of controversy. Critics said the design was a departure from the plans to create a mixed-use, walkable development that was an asset to both the state and the town of North Kingstown. They cited the inclusion of the project’s two anchor retail stores – Lowe’s Home Improvement and Kohl’s – and a generally poor use of the available land.
Approved by the Quonset Development Corporation’s board in March, the plan was rejected by the Statewide Planning Commission, which said that the proposal did not meet the criteria of the state’s master plan regarding the area.
The proposal submitted to the commission last week aims at fixing those issues by including provisions for public transportation, open space and better integration of the Seabee Museum – a portion of the project that will be dedicated to the sailors that used the site during its days as a naval base. It also includes a component not previously discussed in the earlier proposal – a sports complex, which provide a combination of indoor and outdoor facilities.
“This is a much better proposal,” Kaplan said. “It addresses the concerns that were raised directly.”
Scott Wolf, executive director of Grow Smart Rhode Island, one of the chief critics of the former proposal, said that he has not had a chance to address the new design with his group’s board of directors. However, his initial impression was that it is a “substantively better proposal, not just a cosmetically better proposal.” He cited the more pedestrian-friendly nature of the project, higher density on the land and greater opportunity for job creation.
“I give the Quonset team and New Boston some credit in certainly showing some flexibility and some willingness to adapt the new proposal to the concerns that we and others expressed,” Wolf said.
In a statement released last week on behalf of the Quonset Development Corporation, North Kingstown Town Manager Michael Embury called the new plan “significantly revised and improved.”
“The revised proposal makes substantial site improvements in both utilization of the land and the manner in which pedestrians access and move throughout the development,” he said. “The addition of a multistory office building along Post Road and substantial design improvements in the interior of the development ensure that the Quonset Gateway is visually appealing and an economic catalyst to the Post Road corridor planning process.” •
