Officials this month unveiled the first phase of the $80 million “Gateway” project in the Quonset Business Park in North Kingstown, which is slated to add retail, hotel and office tenants to the former Navy base.
Dubbed the Shops at Quonset Point, the first phase of the mixed-use development will include retail amenities, with developer New Boston Development Partners LLC looking to attract as-yet-unnamed local shops including a grocer, a drug store, a coffee shop, restaurants and a bank. The first phase, which will total 450,000 square feet, also will include two anchor stores and a visitors’ center.
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According to the developers, interest in the project has been strong, with nearly 65 percent of the space in the first phase already under negotiations with prospective tenants.
Future phases of the development are slated to include a hotel with 80 to 90 rooms plus office space, which the developer is planning to build based on market conditions, not speculation.
According to Jerry Pucillo, senior vice president of New Boston, the project also will incorporate sustainable ideals, such as use of recycled materials and permeable pavements.
The project has been viewed as a crucial step in Quonset’s progress, so much so that the Quonset Development Corporation – a special-purpose subsidiary of the R.I. Economic Development Corporation – set the parcel aside and chose the developer through a request for proposals.
New Boston, selected from three finalists, was chosen based on its financial strength, its experience in developing different types of projects and its reputation.
W. Geoffrey Grout, CEO and managing director of the Quonset Development Corporation, said that by adding retail and other service businesses to the park, the project will help further development even beyond the obvious addition of 750 permanent jobs and 450 construction jobs (6,600 people currently work at Quonset, where projections show full employment eventually reaching 18,000).
Gov. Donald L. Carcieri – who has been looking to the business park as a means of spurring economic development in the region since he first took office in 2002 – said the project highlights the progress the area has made in the last four years. Before he took office, he said, progress had been hindered by delays in planned infrastructure improvements to the area.
But today, with the first phase of the state Route 403 renovations completed and further upgrades to the area either planned or under way, the business park has been able to draw interest and allow businesses to expand within it. Those companies include Hexagon Metrology’s Browne & Sharpe division, which at one point had threatened to leave the state, and Toray Plastics, which is expanding into a new facility at Quonset.
“It is, as far as I’m concerned, a real crown jewel for the state, in terms of economic development,” Carcieri said.
Aside from bringing the region both amenities and economic development, the project also will help shine a light on some of the workers of the former Quonset Point Naval Air Station.
Included in the plans for the overall development is the Seabee Museum and Memorial Park, a museum that will be dedicated to the World War II construction battalion workers, called the Seabees, who were similar to the Army Corps of Engineers.
Jack F. Sprengel, a member of the museum committee, said he was excited about the museum’s inclusion in the gateway project. The museum will host all five original models of the Quonset Hut, the semicylindrical steel structure designed at Quonset Point that has been a standard for storage facilities since its inception.
“People don’t know the significant history of not only the Quonset Hut, but also the Seabees,” Sprengel said. “We’re very grateful that they took us into their plans, and we feel that we work to the benefit of both organizations.”
