Quonset Business Park: The land of opportunity

<b>Quonset Point</b> in North Kingstown has long provided opportunities for commercial development and job growth. The port has been a topic of debate for many years.
Quonset Point in North Kingstown has long provided opportunities for commercial development and job growth. The port has been a topic of debate for many years.

At the R.I. Economic Development Corporation’s offices in Providence, there’s a white board with a list of what Rhode Island needs to prosper in the 21st century. The second item is “good sites” for industrial development.

With few places for companies to build factories, warehouses and corporate headquarters, state officials and agencies have labored for decades carve out an industrial park on former Navy property at Quonset Point and Davisville.

Still a work in progress, Quonset Business Park is the product of years of planning, construction, and public debate. The 3,150-acre development is the largest of its kind in the state, with enough commercial space for 18,200 workers.

Today, 150 companies with about 6,500 employees operate at the business park, including Electric Boat, Ocean State Job Lot and Toray Plastics America, said Steven J. King, chief operating officer of the Quonset Development Corporation, the quasi-state agency that runs the park.

- Advertisement -

“It provides a great opportunity for the state,” King said in a recent interview. “The amount of acreage and the land available for development provides a huge opportunity for creating a number of jobs here.”

It has been an uphill battle to restore the economic output of the area. During World War II, employment at Quonset peaked at 25,000 civilian and military workers. But in 1973 and 1974, the Navy pulled out, cutting 5,000 civilian jobs and reassigning 2,000 military personnel. Then, from 1975 to 1992, the Navy gradually shut down its port operations at nearby Davisville.

The sites, with land, air and sea access, provided a unique setting for commercial growth. Yet while the state began buying land the properties in the late 1970s, reuse planning for Quonset and Davisville didn’t begin in earnest until the 1990s.

In 1994, a committee of state and local officials began planning the sites’ redevelopment. Two years later, the EDC unveiled plans to merge Quonset and Davisville into a single project – and Quonset Point Davisville Intermodal Inc. entered the picture.

The developer had one big idea for the site: a large container port. Then-Gov. Lincoln C. Almond and the EDC were on board. But the proposal – quickly dubbed the “megaport” by critics – drew strong opposition for many reasons: the estimated $400- to $500-million cost; the prospect of big freighters in Narragansett Bay and big trucks on local roads; the need to dredge the bay, and its potential impact on marine life.

Despite the controversy, plans continued to move forward. With state bonds and federal appropriations, the state built a freight rail line from Quonset to Central Falls that provided a separate track for industrial cargo. Work also began to lay and repair roadways in the development.

In 2001, the R.I. Department of Transportation began realigning Route 403 to ease access to the park from Route 95. (The project completion date is set for early 2008, King said.)
At the same time, however, opposition mounted. An anti-port TV campaign was launched by state Sen. James C. Sheehan, D-North Kingstown, with the support of the Ocean State Defense League, a group created out of opposition to the port.

“This was going to be the fourth or fifth largest port in North America,” Sheehan said, in an interview last week. “You’re talking 1.2 million containers per year coming through North Kingstown.”

Nevertheless, Almond remained at least open to the port proposal, supporting an environmental impact study of the project. Then Gov. Donald L. Carcieri was elected in 2002.

Carcieri killed the container port plan and steered Quonset’s redevelopment in a different direction. In 2004, he signed a law turning the EDC division that managed Quonset into a separate entity, the Quonset Development Corporation. Later that year, the agency hired CB Richard Ellis–New England to serve as broker and leasing agent for the project.

Progress has continued. Last year, Hexagon Metrology, formerly Brown & Sharpe, broke ground on an 115,000-square-foot facility, and New Boston Development Partners won a contract to build a mixed-use project with a hotel, offices and retail along Route 1.

Yet Quonset’s redevelopment is far from over; a 2003 master plan said it would take about 20 years. King said work continues to build internal roads and to connect all the properties to water and sewer lines. And the Navy has yet to transfer 162 acres in the Davisville section to the state, while work is underway to remove contaminants from the land.

Meanwhile, there’s 413 acres of unspoken-for land in the business park, with another 134 acres under agreement, said Charles T. Francis, president of CB Richard Ellis in Providence.

“We’ve had substantial interest in Quonset, there’s no question about that,” Francis said.

“But with any major development, these things have a very long gestation period. It takes a long time from the lip to the cup.”

No posts to display