Developers slow to heed city’s call

Despite receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in state and federal transportation dollars over the past decade, the area around T.F. Green Airport in Warwick could be as challenging as any Rhode Island redevelopment project.
The neighborhood between Post Road and Jefferson Boulevard, rebranded City Centre Warwick last December, is supposed to become the downtown Rhode Island’s second-largest city never had.
But downtowns and airports aren’t a traditional match, and since city officials approved a master plan for the area in 2012, then called the Warwick Station District, there’s been little sign that developers are heeding the call to build there.
The sale of the former Leviton property on Jefferson Boulevard has been the most notable private-sector investment since the master-plan approval, but so far redevelopment of the nonoccupied portions of that site, which include the historic Elizabeth Mill, has yet to materialize.
“The issue, at the end of the day, is always how much rent you can get, and right now it’s not enough to cover the costs,” said Neil Amper, vice president of Capstone Properties in Providence, about the market around the airport. “There needs to be more overall economic progress in the state for that area to revive and change over.”
As an example of how soft demand remains for the general area, Amper cited 100 Jefferson Blvd., a 24,000-square-foot office complex built in 1986 near Route 37 that has been available for two years without significant lease interest.
Of course the soft commercial real estate market is nothing new in the Providence area and extends from the capital itself to the mills of Pawtucket and Woonsocket into the office parks and storefronts of the East Bay, Attleboro and Fall River. What’s different in Warwick is the $300 million in state and federal investment, as estimated by the congressional delegation last year, that’s gone into turning the airport area, now a collection of parking lots and low commercial buildings, into a large, mixed-use center with new apartments, shops and offices.
The largest investment, not including the ever-growing airport itself, is the commuter rail station, although city and state leaders see it as far more than a real estate development tool.
So far ridership to the train station has been underwhelming, but transportation planners hope more-frequent service will change that.
At the end of September, R.I. Airport Corporation CEO Kelly Fredericks told the R.I. Commerce Corporation board of trustees that the state is pressing counterparts in Massachusetts for an additional eight daily commuter train runs to the station.
In addition to new transportation infrastructure and environmental-cleanup investments, the federal government has also contributed $400,000 to the marketing of Warwick City Centre.
Then there are a series of state- and city-funded streetscape improvements to the area, final plans for which are set to be announced shortly, according to city officials.
“We have been looking at how we can use our money to leverage other money and bring infrastructure to the district,” said Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian in a phone interview. “In the meantime we have been marketing properties and negotiating to get people here to show them what the possibilities are.”
Despite few tangible results to point to, Avedisian said he was encouraged by the response.
As imagined in the 2012 Station District master plan, City Centre would be an “urban village” covering 95 acres on both sides of the Interlink walkway to the airport, with the potential to support 1.5 million square feet of development. That area does not include the large Jefferson Boulevard property owned by D’Ambra Construction Co. Inc. or the Leviton property. The plan targeted 20-40 percent office space, 10-35 percent hotel, 10-20 percent retail/entertainment and 30-45 percent residential. Projects in the master-plan area would be subject to streamlined local permitting.
Karl Sherry, partner of Hayes & Sherry Commercial Brokerage, said for land closer to the airport, soft demand is complicated by the number of small parcels under distinct ownership that will likely have to be consolidated for the kind of mixed-use project planners hope to see.
D’Ambra has had plans, including a hotel, for its Jefferson Boulevard property south of the train station, but they have never gotten off the ground.
In the announcement of his company’s acquisition of three of five parcels in the Leviton complex last November, Michael Integlia Jr. said he intended to build between 125,000 and 150,000 square feet of new office space on the western side, and find an adaptive reuse for the Elizabeth Mill. (One parcel went to conservation and the warehouse to Dean Warehousing Services Inc.)
Since then, the Warwick Beacon quoted Integlia saying he can’t find interested occupants and that the redevelopment of the old mill is economically unfeasible, meaning it will likely have to be torn down.
Neither D’Ambra nor Integlia immediately returned calls seeking comment.
Avedisian, who along with other city leaders has worked to save the mill, said Integlia is currently doing a cost-benefit analysis of retrofitting the old mill versus building something new there and hasn’t committed to either course. •

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