Precious Gem
EAST PROVIDENCE – The city’s plan to build a year-round restaurant and install a permanent tent for events on green space in Crescent Park has run into a buzz saw of opposition since it was first unveiled in July.
The resistance has sent Mayor Roberto L. DaSilva and architects hired by the city back to the drawing board. It has also prompted a rebuke to the administration from some City Council members who are concerned the project could drastically alter the 11-acre park that many refer to as the Gem of the City.
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“You talk about the gem – the gem is what we have now,” said Michael Akkaoui, who lives in the neighborhood bordering the park. Akkaoui was the first to speak against the project at a public meeting in August.
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Crescent Park opened in 1886 as an amusement park, second only in popularity to Rocky Point in Warwick, which had opened 40 years earlier. Charles I. D. Looff built a carousel at Crescent Park a decade after it opened – the last remaining vestige of the old park. The amusement park closed in 1977 after running into financial trouble, suddenly freeing up a huge chunk of land.
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A lengthy court battle that played out over several years led to the carousel being saved. A settlement also provided for 7 acres of open space on the water side of Bullocks Point Avenue, which bisects the property; and 4 acres that include the carousel and, more recently, a clam shack on the other side in the shadows of the carousel.
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DaSilva’s original plan – which has since been revised – called for a 6,000-square-foot building that would house a year-round clam shack with indoor seating, office and storage space and bathrooms on the southern end of the water side of the park. In addition, the city proposed installing a 50-by-100-foot permanent concrete slab deeper into the green space as the foundation to support a 48-by-88-foot tent for weddings and other events.
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Driving the plan: a need to raise revenue to preserve and maintain the park's century-old Looff carousel, one of only 10 remaining and a popular destination for Rhode Island families and out-of-state tourists. DaSilva said he was trying to find a way to avoid having the taxpayers of East Providence foot the ongoing costs.
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The plan also called for bathrooms and outdoor showers closer to the beach to help support two other projects. They include making Crescent Beach a licensed, swimmable beach by 2026; and fortifying the shoreline by extending a barrier of large rocks and cutting into the land adjacent to the water by 30 to 50 feet to create more beach.
How the 'Crescent Park Five' fought to preserve green space
Crescent Park is located at the southern end of Riverside, adjacent to a peninsula of several hundred homes called Narragansett Terrace. Linda McEntee has lived on The Terrace, as the locals call it, for 50 years and was one of several residents known as the Crescent Park Five, who saved the Looff carousel from demolition in the late 1970s, leading to the green space that exists today.
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“The whole thing keeps me up at night,” McEntee said recently, referring to DaSilva’s plan. “I walk my dogs telling [the mayor] off. I’ve been upset every day since I heard about this. Who wants to give up green spaces? Once it’s gone, it’s gone.”
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The Crescent Park Five enlisted a young lawyer, fresh out of law school, who also happened to be a Sister of Mercy. Arlene Violet, who would go on to be elected Rhode Island’s first female attorney general in 1984, recalled that she faced an army of lawyers in court from Kelly & Picerne, a real estate company that wanted to tear down the carousel and build single-family homes at Crescent Park after it went out of business.
“There were so many lawyers on the other side,” Violet said. “All of these top-drawer lawyers came in with their briefcases. I didn’t have a briefcase as a nun, so I used to come in with a paper bag.”
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The case played out over several years, going all the way to the Rhode Island Supreme Court. “When it looked like we might win, they decided to settle,” Violet said. The settlement included preservation of 11 acres of land, while Kelly & Picerne could build housing for the elderly and low-income residents to the east and single-family homes to the south.
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As for the mayor’s proposed changes to the park, Violet said: “It has to remain open space; the query is whether the degree of what you’re doing somehow impedes the public space to such a degree that [it violates] the settlement. That’s really, in my view, what the issue is.”
Furious opposition from neighborhood residents
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The reaction from neighbors when they first heard about the proposal was swift and furious.
But it was not only nearby residents, as the park is a popular destination for those across the city. DaSilva unveiled the original plan at a July 10 meeting in the park, but residents complained that it was hard to hear. About an hour in, the gathering devolved and disbanded, leaving some of the neighbors frustrated.
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Three City Council members, at their August meeting, said they would not vote for a plan that included building of any type on the water side, except for maybe bathrooms. The mayor’s office announced that night it would unveil a revised plan at a meeting of the Crescent Park Advisory Commission the following week.
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The mayor said he took the feedback from the July meeting and had planners revise the project, downsizing and moving the restaurant across the street near the carousel. But that still left the tent slab and a smaller office on the water side overlooking the Providence River, along with restrooms and outdoor showers closer to the water.
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DaSilva also acknowledged that the proposed 6,000-square-foot building in the original plan was way too large.
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“We hope that following this process we’ll be able to reach a point where we can bring something that’s going to generate more revenue for upkeep and long-term protection of that jewel of Rhode Island, the Looff carousel,” DaSilva said in opening remarks to about 100 people who had packed into the Senior Center on Aug. 14. “And also create opportunities … for people in the community who want to have an event.”
Over the next 2½ hours, more than a dozen people spoke against the revised plan.
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“The whole thing seems to be ill-conceived,” Jeanne Spira told the advisory committee and the mayor. “We’re not San Diego. Summer is about eight weeks in Rhode Island,” she added. “So you’re going to have a restaurant that you think people are going to come out to in the middle of January?”
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Carl Helmetag added: “It’s not going to be as financially rewarding as it seems like it would be – and it’s going to be a lot more maintenance than you think it will be.”
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Akkaoui, an attorney who has been researching deeds to see what may – or may not – be allowed at the park, said he was troubled that the mayor had not come up with a budget, revenue estimates or a traffic study for the plan.
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“To me, this is backwards,” he said in an interview two days after the meeting. “They don’t have a conceptually approved plan that the City Council will vote for. So why are you spending money on an architect?”
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Despite that, the advisory commission voted 7-2 to approve the mayor’s revised plan.
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How the city proposes to pay for the Crescent Park project
DaSilva said there have been discussions about how to provide an ongoing funding stream to support expensive repairs to the carousel since he became the city’s first full-time mayor in 2019.
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“You want to do a project like this so it benefits the entire community,” DaSilva said in an interview with The Hummel Report the day after he unveiled his revised plan. “I know people get very set in their ways and they don’t want to see change. We have listened and taken their input seriously.”
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DaSilva noted that the City Council gave him the green light two years ago, allocating $225,000 from the capital projects budget to begin exploring options. The mayor said there is also $1 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act money available that needs to be used by 2026.
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In addition to raising money to support the carousel, the city has received a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to develop Crescent Beach, a narrow strip of what is now rock-littered sand, much of which disappears at high tide, into a state-licensed beach by 2026. That necessitated the need for restrooms and showers on the water side of the park.
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The city has also received a $1.8 million grant from the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank to extend a barrier of rocks south, creating a de facto seawall. The proposal includes cutting into the park 30 to 50 feet on the southern edge to try to expand the beach. That, too, has hit a nerve with nearby residents and would need approval from the state’s Coastal Resources Management Council.
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When residents of The Terrace got wind of DaSilva’s plans, they mobilized with an email chain. Many people have told the mayor the city is trying to do too much in the green space and that he should concentrate his efforts on the carousel side.
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Did City Council sign off on mayor's plan? It depends on whom you ask
The mayor acknowledges that his first set of plans called for everything to be on the carousel side of the park. There was even talk of a skating rink. Several months ago he met with City Council President Robert P. Rodericks and Councilman Richard Lawson at Crescent Park, which is part of Lawson’s district.
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DaSilva, in our interview, said the councilmen were “ecstatic” about possibly moving some the buildings to the water side of the park. “If you guys are excited about this, I’m absolutely in favor of doing this,” he recalled saying. “We then pivoted and started the work of putting together a plan for the [water] side.”
Rodericks and Lawson, in separate interviews, remembered the meeting a little differently.
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“Why can’t we put maybe a little building, for refreshments and a bathroom, way down to the right,” Rodericks recalled saying. “We never heard anything more [from the mayor], then all of a sudden there’s a full-blown building [proposed] on the water side.”
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Lawson concurred, adding: “That was the last conversation we had. Next thing we know he’s got a meeting with all of these folks showing them a plan where he’s putting in an event tent in the woods. He said the council is fully on board. I had to get up and say, 'Whoa, whoa, we were not invited to a design meeting. We said see if it can be built on that side.'"
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Lawson said he has gotten more feedback on this issue than on any other during his first term on the council – and it prompted him to oppose any building on the water side.
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“I don’t think it’s a bad idea, but I’m elected to represent the people,” Lawson said. “And it’s not just the Terrace, it’s people all over Riverside saying it’s a beautiful open-space park. Can’t we keep it that way?”
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Lawson said it’s the lack of communication with the mayor that bothers him.
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“He hijacked the whole project and started putting in lifeguard offices. When did we ever talk about a beach at Crescent Park when the beach disappears at high tide?" Lawson said. "When did we decide we’re building a wedding venue? We’re not looking to build the West Valley Inn or the Venus De Milo. We’re just looking for a tent.”
Where the dispute stands now
The City Council in August awarded a contract to Dune Brothers Seafood to operate a clam shack near the carousel, in a building that has been vacant since Blount Fine Foods stopped operations four years ago. (The proposed new restaurant building would be located just south and the old building demolished to provide more parking.) The grand opening was Aug. 22, and Dune Brothers also has permission to sell alcohol.
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Rodericks said he has made it clear to the mayor in recent conversations that he does not have the council’s support for anything on the water side, short of maybe a composting bathroom closer to the water.
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“The water side is going to stay status quo. Nothing is going to go over there," Rodericks said. "We’re back to the original goal, which was to get some type of a clam shack, refreshment stand on the carousel side.”
He said he appreciates DaSilva’s efforts to provide a funding stream to maintain the carousel, but added that the city needs to consider putting a line item in the budget, or seeking grants and contributions.
“We’re not going to sustain that carousel by selling hot dogs and having a tent rental. This isn’t the answer,” Rodericks said.
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The Hummel Report is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that relies, in part, on donations. For more information, go to HummelReport.org. Reach Jim at Jim@HummelReport.org.
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