PROVIDENCE – A boutique hotel that was proposed on the bank of the Providence River on a property known as Parcel 1A has fallen by the wayside, after the developer failed to obtain a waiver from the R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council that was needed to move forward with the project.
A spokesperson for the I-195 Redevelopment District Commission, which controls the 0.28-acre property on South Water Street, said the commission is planning to issue a new request for proposals for the development of the site. But first the commission is doing its “due diligence” by reviewing an engineering report issued two years ago by the Coastal Resources Management Council over its concerns on the proposed development of Parcel 1A, according to commission spokesperson Cara Cromwell.
The six-story, 52-room River View Hotel, proposed by Cambridge, Mass.-based project developer Kendall Hotel Group and its owner Providence native Gerald Fandetti, drew a long list of problems detailed in the 23-page engineering report issued in March 2020. The project received Level 1 approval from the I-195 Redevelopment District Commission in November 2017.
It wasn’t until a few months ago that the commission decided to pull the plug on the River View Hotel project, Cromwell said, with commission staff explaining during one of its most recent public meetings that a lack of progress on the regulatory front was the reason why.
The development team behind the River View Hotel project, which was slated to contain an art gallery and a restaurant, submitted a permitting application to the CRMC back in 2019, but it never reached the point of a public hearing.
In a letter sent in October by a lawyer representing the I-195 Redevelopment District Commission, Fandetti was invited to participate in the upcoming RFP process for the development of Parcel 1A.
“The commission considered the proposed project to be abandoned,” wrote attorney Charles Rogers Jr. “The commission anticipates circulating a request for proposals for Parcel 1A in the coming months and your client is free to participate in that process.”
Marc Larocque is a PBN staff writer. Contact him at Larocque@PBN.com. You may also follow him on Twitter @LaRockPBN.
