To the Editor:
Your front page story about the Allens Avenue waterfront (“Competing visions along waterfront,” May 17), seemed to be inspired in part by the vigorous lobbying and public relations effort funded by the Working Waterfront Alliance. Nonetheless, the story was balanced.
The employment figures that you printed, however, were obviously furnished by the group’s public relations person. They are hugely inflated. There are only two marine-dependent businesses along the Providence waterfront north of Thurbers Avenue, namely Sprague Energy and Promet Marine Services. Together they employ fewer than 70 workers.
The present W-3 zoning adopted in 1994 has not attracted one additional marine-related business. In fact, there were three in 1994, but Northeast Petroleum pulled out of my site in 2002.
Promet came to its present facility in the early 1970s. Believe it or not, Promet itself is grandfathered and would not be allowed to operate in the present W-3 zone (created in 1994) without a variance. You will note in the city’s advertisement of the June 1 City Council Committee on Ordinances hearing, that the ordinance is being amended to correct this defect and give Promet legal rather than grandfathered status.
As I have stated repeatedly, the W-3 zone north of Thurbers Avenue with its present restrictions has created a “Wilting Waterfront.” Photos of the waterfront are proof of that, with many nonwater-dependent activities in the area being adult-entertainment facilities.
Perhaps you could use these photos in a nice two-page spread. These pictures would be worth 100,000 lines of rhetoric and deceptive statistics.
Patrick T. Conley
Providence Piers owner
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Don’t you just love how Conley will lie and lie and lie to try and make people believe him? You’d think after being humiliated and run in to bankruptcy he would have learned a lesson. Perhaps we need to teach him another lesson. Some people just never learn.