Eastbayri.com

EAST PROVIDENCE — Squantum Woods Park is slated to open in about a month following a lengthy closure that dates back to October.

The 28-acre park located just off Veterans Memorial Parkway has been closed to the public while crews work to complete two separate projects. The projects are aimed at improving environmental conditions in the area, which decades ago served as a popular spot for winter ice skating.

DiPrete Engineering has overseen both efforts while the work itself has been performed by All Island, a contractor based out of Portsmouth. The first project began in mid-October and wrapped up in mid-December.

According to Brandon Carr, a project engineer with DiPrete, work on the first project was focused on the front half of the site, near the parking area. Mr. Carr said the goal was to improve the quality of stormwater run-off coming from Veterans Memorial Parkway. Mr. Carr said a type of filtration system is now in place to help clean the stormwater that flows from the road and into a park stream.

Contractors had to remove about two dozen trees to complete the work, all of which have been re-planted.

The large majority of funding for this first project, about $130,000 in total, was provided through an Environmental Protection Agency grant. City planning director Jeanne Boyle said remaining funding, which totaled about $5,000, was kicked in by Chevron. Ms. Boyle said this will fund interpretive signs to be placed around the site explaining the improvements.

The signs are expected to go up later this year.

Funding for the second project is being provided by Village on the Waterfront. Down the waterfront from Squantum Woods and also just off Veterans Memorial Parkway is a former tank farm owned Chevron. For the last several years, the site has been the subject of VOTW, an on-going development project.

At full build-out, the 26-acre site will be home to 600 residential units including townhouses, condominiums and apartments along with 40,000 square feet of commercial uses including, shops, office space and a fitness center. Ten percent of the housing units will be deemed affordable, as required by Waterfront District regulations.

There will also be a kayak beach and rental store that will be open to the public, along with all open space, trails, and a proposed fishing pier.

Mr. Carr said the requirement to conduct the second project at Squantum Woods Park was born of the permitting process for VOTW. Mr. Carr said the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management and the Coastal Resources Management Council required VOTW developers to perform some wetlands restoration. Squantum Park was subsequently identified as an area for clean-up.

The overall goal of project number two, Mr. Carr said, is to restore the site’s pond to its original condition. The second project began in mid-December immediately after the first project completed.

Mr. Carr said the second project is primarily focused on the site’s pond, which has become infested with phragmites. The pond has been dredged with a couple tons of roadway sentiment removed from the site.

Mr. Carr said the second project is expected to wrap up by the middle of March but no later than month’s end. The project has a $250,000 total estimated cost.

East Providence Planning Director Jeanne Boyle said both projects could help local residents realize a park that they may have overlooked in recent years.

“I think the park had really gotten to the point where, because it was overgrown and the parking lot had deteriorated, it was no longer an amenity and it had become unattractive and it sort of looked unsightly,” Ms. Boyle said.

“Now, this is a much more inviting park. I think the public will want to go there more and it’s much easier for the park department to maintain the park and the parking lot itself.”