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By
CHRIS BARRETT
Developers plan
to unveil new conceptual plans for the former Rocky
Point Amusement Park at a City Hall meeting tomorrow
night.
Joseph
Shekarchi, an attorney for Vanderbilt LLC, said the
company is working with developer Toll Brothers to
gather comments from residents about a proposal to build
395 units on Rocky Point Beach and the former Rocky
Point Amusement Park.
Shekarchi said
the companies have not filed any plans with the city but
are seeking comments as part of a broader initiative to
keep residents involved in the process.
“This is just
another one of our community meetings,” he said. “It’s
not an unveiling of anything completely new. There’s
constant revision to the plan to help Toll Brothers
understand what the issues are and the community to
understand what the scale and scope is.”
Shekarchi said
developers would be showing a plan that includes six
three-story multi-family buildings on the land of the
former amusement park that closed in 1996 after
financial problems.
“Those buildings
are designed in a coastal Rhode Island-style—brick with
dormer roofs, some Victorian and New England-style
shingling,” Shekarchi said. “They wouldn’t look
institutional. They’ll look residential, something like
the mansions in Newport.”
Shekarchi said
Toll Brothers has retained Boston-based CBT Architects
to design the buildings that would house about 44 units
each and prepare proposals for condominiums at the
nearby Rocky Point Beach area.
“The remaining
units [at Rocky Point Beach] will be carriage house or
townhouse style condominiums with two or three attached
units,” Shekarchi said.
Under the terms
of an agreement between the beach association and the
Small Business Administration, the current landowner,
beach residents will have to leave their homes by Nov.
30, 2006 to make way for the project.
Combined, both
sites are about 125 acres and Shekarchi said that under
the current proposal half, or 62.5 acres, would remain
open space.
“There’s a lot
of open space in this project that could be developed
but we're trying to maximize open space and in order to
do that we're going to have to continue to discuss how
to fund [the project],” Shekarchi said.
He
added that designers have also made efforts to maintain
public access to the beach – an issue residents raised
when the city first discussed proposals for the land’s
use.
“This project
anticipates, and we’ll have on the submitted plans,
multiple public trails to the water,” Shekarchi said.
Shekarchi said
plans also call for constructing a public parking lot
near the former park entrance and cleaning up
environmental hazards, including a former landfill.
“We’re not
anticipating any major [environmental] impact other than
positive,” Shekarchi said. “The notion is to improve the
quality of the environment there, which remember, that
property has been beaten up pretty badly both from the
Rocky Point Amusement Park and from neglect over the
years.”
Sue
Baker, spokeswoman for Mayor Scott Avedisian, said the
mayor had not seen the proposal and thus could not
comment. However, she said the mayor would “need to
discuss” Toll Brother’s proposal to build 395 units.
Under a purchase
and sales agreement with the SBA, Vanderbilt can build
at least 350 units. While the agreement does not
specifically prohibit more units, an increase would most
likely need to be negotiated with the city, which has
final approval over the site’s plans.
SBA
Regional Director Mark Hayward said the agency had not
seen the plans and directed questions to the mayor’s
office.
Wednesday’s
meeting will be held at 6 p.m. in the City Council
Chambers at Warwick City Hall.
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