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SOLD! Promoting, Protecting Rhode Island Waterfronts Addressed at 6th Annual Ronald C. Baird Sea Grant Science SymposiumBy Monica Allard Cox Newport: “Tremendous Investment” a Mixed Blessing During a boat tour of the water-front that preceded the symposium, Newport planning director Paige Bronk highlighted the city’s assets and challenges. “We’ve pushed tourism to the point that we’re increasingly successful, but people are wondering if we’ve put all our eggs in one basket,” he said. In fact, said Anita Rafael, who hosted the tour aboard The Gansett, tourists have asked her whether the fishing boats they see tied up at Newport Shipyard have been placed there by the tourism bureau. Tourism has been a mixed blessing for Newport. Three million tourists visit the city each year, sometimes overwhelming the year-round population of just over 26,000 with summer weekend partying and traffic jams. Hotels that predate modern building codes occupy the waterfront, vulnerable to hurricanes and limiting public access to the water. However, though the city lacks economic impact measures, Bronk said that sailboat races and family-oriented events such as the Tall Ships Festival have attracted the kind of tourists Newport’s business owners love to see—those who stay for a few days and spend money at lo-cal restaurants and shops. To alleviate traffic problems, Newport has encouraged visitors to use public transportation by offering $2 parking at the Visitors Center to those who use the RIPTA trolleys. Additionally, the city has obtained a $1 million grant for a harbor shuttle that will travel a series of stops including Perotti Park, Ann Street Pier, and possibly the International Yacht Restoration School, Fort Adams, and other locations. Bronk also expressed frustration with the city’s difficulties in obtaining the type of development, including public access, that it would like to see on the waterfront. He explained that there is a “traditional maritime” zone for uses such as boat building and repair as well as other commercial and recreational uses—but not residential development. However, the majority of Newport’s waterfront is zoned “waterfront business”—which does not preclude residential development. He said that the city is trying to encourage mixed water-dependent uses on the waterfront. “You don’t really need a residen-tial use right on the water,” he said. Attracting and keeping traditional waterfront uses, however, is challenging. On Bowen’s Wharf, the Aquidneck Lobster Company, a wholesaler, is largely being converted to hospitality and retail, Bronk said, due to struggles to remain profitable. And residential uses are “bidding out all other uses,” said Kip Bergstrom, then-R.I. Economic Policy Council executive director, who participated in the tour. Bronk said the city issues about 1,000 permits for redevelopment and renovations annually, but has little control over some of the outcomes, including design and public access. The city, for instance, is having trouble turning its goal of creating a harbor walk into reality. He cited as an example the redevelopment of the former Christie’s restaurant on Thames Street into Forty One North: “This is a multimillion dollar development, and we still could not get a harbor walk on it.” He criticized other redevelopment projects for building too close to the waterfront in a style that is out of keeping with the rest of the neighborhood. He added that privately owned parcels at Lee’s Wharf, currently parking lots, are “a waste of space, but secondly they make me nervous. There’s nothing there-- that's actually what scares me. Without the proper plan, we could get something undesirable." Even where the city has clear regulatory authority, such as over existing access points and the building of docks, enforcement of its rules is difficult. Newport Waterfront Commission Chairman Hank Kniskern, pointing out a bulkhead encroaching on a right-of-way and an unpermitted dock during the tour, said that some developers have an attitude towards the city government of "Just build it and they'll compromise later." He added, "We've got to come to grips with the legal issues at some point." He pointed out the difficulties in doing so, however, saying that developers with "big pockets" are taking on a part-time city attorney. Newport has had better success with city-owned property. At the North End, the city acquired former Navy housing for a redeveopment project, created a master plan for the site adn established design guidelines that were conditions for the sale or lease of the new property to developers. The site now houses the Community College of Rhode Island's Newport campus and a Head Start childcare facility and will house the BankNewport headquarters. The project recently won an award from the Rhode Island chapter of the American Planning Association, and it has proved profitable for the city, Bronk said. Symposium keynote speaker John Bullard, president of the Sea Education Association and former mayor of New Bedford, Mass., was optimistic about Newport's potential. "There's tremendous investment that's going on every day," he said. Channeling that energy is "an easier problem than how do you create that energy?" East Providence Banks on Brownfields Just a few miles up the bay in East Providence, the shoreline is characterized not by hotels and condominiums but by brownfields that had once housed manufacturing plants and oil and gas facilities. The city, through enabling legislation, created a waterfront development district for seven of its 14 miles of coastline to encourage redevelopment of many of those parcels. One of the biggest challenges has been the contamination of the sites, not only due to cleanup costs, but also due to the owners’ reluctance to redevelop or sell the sites and potentially face liability. Jeanne Boyle, East Providence planning director, said that for large multinational corporations, a 40-acre site is not a big deal—though it is for the city—and the companies can simply leave them unused without affecting their bottom lines. Despite the challenges, Boyle pointed to several projects in various stages of development, including one on a property owned by Chevron. The city has been working with Chevron and Picerne Real Estate Group to redevelop the site into 30,000 square feet of commercial space, residential development, and a potential extension of the East Bay Bike Path along the waterfront. They have also been working with the state on remediation of site contaminants. One tour participant questioned whether residences with a view of the gritty industrial waterfront would be marketable. Michael Hennessy, regional director for Picerne, answered that industry was actually a selling point: “People like to see the activity. We see this as a benefit. The tugboats and everything are a definite plus.” Further north, Boyle pointed out the Phillipsdale Landing, where she said a “beautiful” redevelopment plan includes waterfront access, commercial space, a waterfront restaurant, and residential development. “That was a pretty challenging site,” she said, noting that it was entirely paved. North of Phillipsdale, the waterfront district ends, and the active industrial areas there are expected to continue, Boyle said. Though the waterfront development district has had success in redeveloping abandoned, underused, and contaminated properties, there are potential drawbacks, at least for current East Providence residents. Continuous public access along the waterfront, part of waterfront district requirements, was important in encouraging residents to accept the new district. “There’s going to be a lot of density, and along with that comes traffic. This is one of the benefits the general public gets,” Boyle said. The public access will include walking and fishing opportunities as well as parking. Pawtucket: Waterfront Redevelopment a Hard Sell Pawtucket, with 72,000 residents, the most heavily populated of the three cities and the furthest from the ocean, is trying with limited success to revitalize its waterfront, said Michael Cassidy, Pawtucket planning director. Pawtucket’s Redevelopment Agency owns most of the property available for redevelopment, Cassidy said. But unlike Newport, “We have the land, we have the space, what we don’t have is anybody interested in doing anything.” In fact, Cassidy said, the boat hosting the East Providence and Pawtucket tour (sporting a plaque inscribed “Hope”) was briefly a commuter ferry that ran between Pawtucket and Providence. “It was before its time,” he added, noting that commute times have risen since the boats were sold off, this one to Providence Piers. The city has seen success with at least one waterfront project on the Pawtucket River—construction has begun on a Hampton Inn on the site of a former car dealership, redevelopment the city worked for over five years to achieve, Cassidy said. The city is now targeting 10 of 28 acres owned by National Grid that Cassidy described as the riverfront’s “biggest opportunity for development.” The utility company is working on a remediation plan for the site, and Pawtucket is encouraging the company to make the portion not being used for an electrical distribution facility available for redevelopment, rather than leaving it vacant. “We haven’t sold them on that yet,” Cassidy said. Pawtucket’s riverfront plans are just part of its revitalization efforts, which Cassidy said have also included creating affordable housing, getting rid of absentee landlords, and foster-ing a growing artists’ community. The Sandra-Feinstein Gamm Theater moved to Pawtucket with Redevelopment Agency assistance, the first arts high school in the state has been established in the Pawtucket Armory, and the city hosts a successful annual arts festival. The resulting positive statewide publicity, Cassidy said, has helped the city achieve other redevelopment goals by improving the city’s image. “That’s vibrant” In his remarks at the symposium, Bullard said that in New Bedford, fishing boats, ferries, fuel boats, the educational vessel Ernestina, tugs, barges, and water testers, as well as fish and egrets can all be seen in the city’s waters. “That’s vibrant.” New Bedford’s working water-front “generates over a billion dollars a year in economic activity in the region,” said Francis Mahady, an economist and planner who also spoke at the symposium. Bullard said achieving New Bedford’s thriving waterfront required a process that included visioning exercises with residents to determine what they wanted the city to look like, followed by public infrastructure investments. He spoke of Glen Cove, Long Island, with two Superfund sites, abandoned residential development, and bankrupt boat yards, as an example of how to engage different agencies and community groups in planning. He said that the city used National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration money to bring federal agencies and local, private, and public interests together, presented the city’s vision to them, and then told each group what their role needed to be. This created pressure and accountability, Bullard said—the feeling that each contribution was one simple but crucial part of an overall effort. Every government employee, he added, wants to feel like he or she is making a difference. “That’s fulfilling. It’s got nothing to do with your paycheck or your pension.” Speaking specifically to East Providence and Pawtucket, and describing their challenge as “How do we grab something we know is tremendously valuable and make something out of it,” Bullard recommended the mayors attend the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, during which mayors and design professionals examine cities’ specific design problems and develop-ment opportunities. He also added that “The more difficult you make it for developers to build, the more they will want to do so” because rules requiring high-quality design that apply to everyone mean that one property will not be devalued by a neighbor’s shoddy development. Hennessy, from Picerne, also offered advice on how cities could best work with developers: Show developers what the city wants, and provide clear but flexible guidelines “so a developer can actually come in and work on a piece of property.” Hennessy called the joint venture between Chevron and East Providence to redevelop Chevron’s property unique in having varied entities working together. He pointed out that in addition to the city, developers also have to work with the R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council, the department of transportation, the utility companies, the public transit authority, and other agencies. On the developer’s end, there are engineers, landscape architects, lawyers, salespeople, marketing staff, and others involved. “It’s almost like a puzzle putting it all together,” he said, and developers “want all these agencies working together so we can get through this process.” Speaker Kevin Hively, president of the business consulting firm Ninigret Partners, later concurred, adding that while it is as expensive to develop in Rhode Island as it is in other places, “you can’t get the price points you can get some-where else.” Rhode Island Responding to Climate Change The symposium also focused on climate change and its effects on Rhode Island coastal communities. Kate Moran, associate dean for research and administration and ocean engineering professor at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography (GSO), said Rhode Island is taking the lead on “integrating the importance of climate change into the policy of our state.” Legislation has enabled the state building code to be revised to consider climate change. Moran said that the latest Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change report called human-induced climate change “unequivocal” and said that it is happening everywhere. “Rhode Island will be warmer and coastal ecosystems will change. We have to understand and adapt,” she said, recommending that the state incorporate the current estimate of sea-level rise in its regulations, but review the estimate annually. Jeanne Salvatore, senior vice president of public affairs for the Insurance Information Institute, said that while insurance companies have not taken a position on whether climate change is contributing to severe hurricanes, they believe “we are in a period of time where we should expect more severe hurricanes,” adding, “We never say if a hurricane hits the Northeast, we say when.” While other speakers presented scenarios about climate change impacts on the state, along with recommendations for land-use planning that included raising building heights, retreating from the coastline, creating more stringent building code requirements, and avoiding the use of fill to bring structures artificially out of the floodplain, city planners approached the recommendations with caution. Ideas Are Good, but … “Planners typically can influence a community, but in reality they don’t have that level of control,” Bronk said. University courses in community planning teach future planners theories to implement, he added, but accomplishing change requires community consensus. He said that as a URI planning student, he felt naively inspired by what he learned, thinking, “This information is great, and once it’s carried to everyone they’ll understand, too.“ But that’s not how it works.” Boyle and Bronk suggested that the academic community gathered at the symposium could help the municipalities with data and technical assistance. Cassidy concurred: “We have to sell this to the public.” He said that in proposing a new building regulation at the city level, “I have to convince the city council there’s a reason we ought to be doing this.” And, he added, “We have to keep in mind the developers are the ones who are going to be carrying this out.” —Monica Allard Cox is Communications Manager/Webmaster for Rhode Island Sea Grant.
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