PROVIDENCE – The Providence City Plan Commission on Tuesday held off discussing a plan that would rezone Allens Avenue after lawyers for local businesses charged that the city failed to advertise the meeting properly.
The commission was slated to discuss a plan advanced by Mayor David N. Cicilline that would create a new “Working Waterfront” district to the east of Allens Avenue, along the waterfront, roughly between Thurbers Avenue and Johnston & Wales University. Only industrial uses would be allowed in the area.
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The same plan would also curtail some industrial uses both to the north of Thurbers Avenue and the west of Allens Avenue, and it would eliminate the requirement that businesses there be marine-based. The City Council would ultimately need to sign off on such a plan.
Lawyers for local businesses told the commission the plan would effectively put local industrial businesses out of business. Hotels and other forms of commercial development allowed under the new plan would push out the industrial uses that currently line the street, said Andrew Teitz, a lawyer for the Providence Working Waterfront Alliance, a business group.
“You throw the northern part of Allens to the wolves of commercial development,” Teitz said.
He also charged that such a plan would violate the city’s interim comprehensive plan and contradict state regulations that zone the waters of Narragansett Bay in the area for heavy industrial use. And he complained that the city sought to restrict industrial uses in order to limit competition for the city-owned Port of Providence.
“You are using your governing powers of zoning to provide an unfair advantage to the city port,” Teitz said.
Commissioners, without discussing the plan themselves, postponed further discussion of the topic until May 11. Lawyers for local businesses said the city did not clearly advertise the fact that the proposed plan would restrict uses presently allowed in some areas along Allens Avenue.
David and Joel Cohen, owners of Promet Marine Service Corp., said they and the alliance planned to return in May and keep fighting the city’s plan. The brothers said they had spent more than $1 million fighting the city’s attempts to create mixed-use development in an area now containing primarily water-dependent industrial uses and strip clubs.
“But we’re still fighting,” David Cohen said.
Separately, the City Plan Commission voted to recommend that the City Council adopt an ordinance that would ban residential development at the former Shooters nightclub property at Fox Point. Neighborhood groups have urged the city for months to turn the waterfront property into a public facility, perhaps with a marina and an area for events and nonprofit organizations.
The commission voted in February to recommend that the city prohibit residences in the area but redid the vote on the advice of the city solicitor, who judged the initial vote improper. The commission reached the same conclusion on Tuesday, but also went a step farther and voted to ban all hotels in the area. The proposed ordinance now moves to the City Council.
“We’re feeling good about it,” said David Riley, co-chair of neighborhood group Head of the Bay Gateway, which is fighting to keep the property for public use.
Three candidates running to become the city’s next mayor are scheduled to discuss the future of Fox Point on Wednesday night at a debate hosted by the Fox Point Neighborhood Association.
Rep. Steven M. Costantino, City Councilman John J. Lombardi and former Housing Court Judge Angel Taveras – all Democrats – will have 15 minutes each to lay out their vision for the waterfront, the Shooters property and other land being opened up by the relocation of Interstate 195.
The meeting starts at 7 p.m. at Sheldon Street Church, 51 Sheldon St., Providence. The candidates are scheduled to begin speaking at about 7:50 p.m.
The Fox Point neighborhood group has failed miserably to recognize three (3) major facts:
1- Providence is not a little town; it is a New England’s 2nd largest city and a major American city and as such should not resemble a little town…it should be taller, denser, larger
2- Providence needs to encourage, attract, and support tax generating development; it needs revenue!
3- Fox Point does not need any more parks…this is critically valuable real estate
The Shooters site should be used to tie residential development to the expanded downtown area. If you want to live in a little town, move to Tiverton.
Dr. Steve Castiglioni
Wayland
I’m all for treating Providence like the major city that it is, but seriously, what a stupid conclusion. Providence has a serious condo housing glut, in case you hadn’t noticed. On top of that, there’s more than enough in the way vacant land (to put it lightly) and vast parking lots in the downtown area with which to go “taller, denser, and more urban.” If you want to address that, do so where it’s appropriate and the space already exists. Don’t screw over an otherwise attractive, sustainable neighborhood, and in the process allow downtown to continue to be destroyed at the hands of bad zoning policy and inadequate mass transit. Change something that actually matters. The CPC should be given the credit they deserve for not selling out an incredible piece of land in one of America’s most beautiful and interesting neighborhoods to the least creative use possible – more condos.