New plans for former Navy land

LIFE SUPPORT: Newport officials are working toward negotiating a deal with the federal government for the former Navy Hospital complex, shown above in a photo circa 1970. / COURTESY U.S. NAVY
LIFE SUPPORT: Newport officials are working toward negotiating a deal with the federal government for the former Navy Hospital complex, shown above in a photo circa 1970. / COURTESY U.S. NAVY

Restoring 225 acres of abandoned U.S. Navy property spanning three communities turned out to be too large and complicated for a single redevelopment project.
So Newport, Middletown and Portsmouth are going their separate ways to reuse Aquidneck Island’s Navy surplus land with its vacant, old hospital, empty fields, crumbling piers and abandoned tank farms stretching across the west side of Aquidneck Island.
Roughly six years after the Navy first announced it would unload the land, the three communities last fall ended a joint planning and redevelopment process first launched in 2010.
Instead, they’ll each focus on the land within their borders and negotiate buying it from the federal government individually.
“The hard part is all the properties are very different,” said Middletown Town Administrator Shawn J. Brown. “The Portsmouth tank farms are large and have considerable environmental challenges, while the Middletown Navy Lodge is ready to be transferred, is only 3 acres and in the most important commercial area of the town.”
Before focusing on their individual projects, the three towns had been exploring a joint partnership with the Navy called an Economic Development Conveyance.
Created to help communities suffering from the economic effects of base closings, this type of partnership would have allowed the towns to take control of the surplus land at minimal upfront cost.
The Navy, as partners, would receive payment for the land only after it is redeveloped and, as a result, would be working with the communities to see it put to productive use.
On Aquidneck Island, the chief stumbling block to a three-town combined economic-development conveyance was the poor condition of the Portsmouth tank farms compared with the properties further south.
Home to 22 empty fuel tanks, nine of them underground, the tank-farm properties in Portsmouth are undergoing an extensive environmental cleanup by the Navy.
After numerous delays, the tank-farm cleanup is scheduled to start this year with an estimated completion date of 2016 or 2017, according to Lisa M. Woodbury Rama, spokeswoman for Naval Station Newport. Even then, the 145 acres in the two tank farms will need future monitoring and use restrictions. While the properties in Middletown and Newport are seen as valuable assets, the contaminated tank farms are currently liabilities that the other communities were in no hurry to attach themselves to.
In Middletown particularly, town officials are anxious to turn the 3-acre former Naval Lodge property off of West Main Road into a mixed-use complex and the former Midway Pier to the north into a waterfront park.
Brown, the town administrator, said now that the larger Economic Development Conveyance plan is off the table, Middletown hopes to have a deal with the federal government for the Naval Lodge property in the next few months, with an eye toward closing on the land this summer.
The purchase price will likely be determined by a series of appraisals, Brown said, that now have to take into account the current zoning for government use only.
Although formal planning for the property won’t begin until it’s acquired, the town has looked at developing the land to resemble a village center due to its location near the intersection of East Main Road and West Main Road. Future plans could include municipal uses as well as commercial and residential space, Brown said.
The Middletown section of the 67-acre Midway/Green Lane property slated for a park (part of that parcel is in Portsmouth) would be donated free of charge with a deed restriction limiting it to public, recreational use.
Brown said the state has set aside money to build the park, which is still a few years away from construction due to environmental issues, to replace a fishing area lost to the reconstruction of the Jamestown Bridge.
Across the town line in Newport, city officials are eyeing a slightly longer timeline to negotiate a deal with the federal government for the former Navy Hospital complex.
Pat Faye, spokeswoman for City Manager Jane Howington, said negotiations over the property were delayed by the government shutdown, but are now underway. The city hopes to reach an agreement with the Navy by the fall, she said. Howington declined to discuss Newport’s plans for the 7-acre waterfront property, which has its own dock, but previous discussions have included apartments, stores and a hotel.
The Navy said the old hospital has asbestos and lead-paint problems, and there is debate about whether the building, which would likely qualify for historic designation, will be preserved in any redevelopment plan.
Back at the tank farms, although Newport and Middletown have abandoned a joint Economic Development Conveyance, Portsmouth now plans to pursue one on its own for the property within its borders.
“Portsmouth will try to become its own regional authority and under that guise attempt to convert the tank farms into an economic-development project,” said Frederick W. Faerber, past chairman of Portsmouth Redevelopment Agency. He was also vice chairman of the Aquidneck Island Reuse Implementation Authority, the recently dissolved group that has been working on a joint conveyance.
“We have provided the Navy with a reuse plan that implies development with the marine trades of the tank farms closest to the waterfront,” Faerber said. “The rest of it, we don’t know what we can do there.”
A final, complicating piece of the surplus-land puzzle is the future of Burma Road, the Navy-owned street that winds south along the coast until stopping at Naval Station Newport.
The Navy wants to rid itself of the road with the land around it. But the state, which would maintain it, and municipalities want the road to continue all the way to Coddington Highway so it can relieve traffic on East and West Main Road.
The Navy has rejected allowing a public street to cut through the base on security grounds, so the communities are trying to work out an alternative connection, said Tina Dolen, executive director of the Aquidneck Island Planning Commission. •

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