01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, March 28, 2007
By Cynthia Needham
Journal Staff Writer

Warwick firefighters battle a blaze that heavily damaged a onetime office building at the former Rocky Point Amusement Park last fall.

The Providence Journal / Gretchen Ertl

WARWICK — Demolition work at the former Rocky Point Amusement Park is expected to begin next month and could be completed by this summer, the U.S. Small Business Administration said yesterday. Meanwhile the city is again soliciting proposals for redevelopment at the site, after a real-estate consortium backed out of a deal to build condominiums there earlier this year.

Yesterday’s announcements put plans for the former park back on track after several months of uncertainty.

The SBA, the state-appointed receiver for Rocky Point, has hired Providence engineering firm Fuss & O’Neill to raze about 40 to 50 buildings in the park’s former midway at a cost of $190,000, officials said at a meeting yesterday. The demolition will leave just two structures standing — the Shore Dinner Hall and the Windjammer building.

The company is expected to begin asbestos abatement at the site in the next few weeks, once it has clearance from the state Health Department. Demolition will follow soon after, with the entire project expected to take four to six weeks to complete.

“With the removal of these buildings the agency is moving a step closer to acceptable use for this valuable property on Narragansett Bay,” SBA District Director Mark Hayward said yesterday.

City officials hailed the announcement with relief. Following several devastating fires on the property, including one last October, the city has pushed to see the dilapidated and vandal-prone buildings demolished.

The concern is that the structures could again catch fire, forcing rescue crews into unsafe situations. When you’re talking about a maze-filled funhouse — and a decaying one at that — safety risks for fire and rescue personnel are significant, Mayor Scott Avedisian said yesterday.

In January, a U.S. District judge ordered the SBA to pay for razing the buildings at the site.

The mayor yesterday disagreed with the suggestion that the demolition will eat away at another piece of Rhode Island nostalgia.

“I think if you saw the property today, you would be nostalgic about memories, but you wouldn’t really be nostalgic about a lot that’s still on the property,” the mayor said.

Despite its rundown state, the former Rocky Point parcel remains a unique and therefore valuable piece of property. It is one of the largest waterfront swaths between Boston and New York, Hayward said.

When the development consortium Vanderbilt Capital pulled out of a deal to build condos at the site in January, many in Warwick wondered about the amusement park’s future. But the city says it has seen an impressive amount of interest in the land.

In recent weeks, 21 companies, from as far away as California, Florida and New York, have filed inquiries about the property.

The city will start accepting formal proposals for the site between April 3 and April 17; details have yet to be worked out. Some of the companies interested have previously expressed an interest in the site; others cold-called the office saying they’d like to know more.

The mayor says that tearing down most of the buildings will make the parcel more attractive to developers who will no longer have to worry about clean-up at the site.

Rocky Point closed in 1995, after years of losses under former owner Arnold Kilberg’s Moneta Capital. Creditors liquidated the property in 1999, after which the SBA was appointed to manage the site and find a long-term use for it.

In 2003, Vanderbilt Capital reached a tentative agreement with the SBA to purchase the property, but that plan stalled while the two sides argued over the size and scope of the project.

When that deal fell through, the city announced that it could not hold out much longer for a new developer. A $2.2-million federal grant to preserve parts of the property as open space expires this summer. As a condition of the grant, the city must come up with an additional $2.2 million, in matching funds. Vanderbilt had agreed to provide the matching funds as part of its agreement. Without a similar pledge from a new developer, the city risks losing that money.