This is about the quality of life here.”

Fred Massie, Warren Planning Board Chairman

Update: Please find a flyer for the final public information session occurring on Wednesday, Sept. 8 at 7:00 p.m. at Town Hall here

Picture two streets — one in the perilous path of advancing climate change that will soon render it permanently submerged, the other a chronically under-developed, inefficiently designed stretch of unforgiving, impervious pavement with little thought for pedestrians or the town’s future. Although they are beset by different issues, one plan may drastically improve the situations of both.

Last week the Warren Planning Board took a small but important step towards implementing that plan, checking off another box towards a goal that has been billed as a better, more pedestrian friendly, more economically prosperous and environmentally resilient future for two of Warren’s most important corridors — Market Street and Metacom Avenue.

The board unanimously approved a proposed amendment to the town’s zoning laws, which would create a special revitalization district for Metacom Avenue. The amendment creates unique and more stringent zoning regulations for all new developments that seek to come into the Metacom Avenue area, with the hopes of creating a more forward-thinking, pedestrian-friendly area of mixed-use economic activity.

Put simply, if the approved zoning amendment is fully codified by the Warren Town Council, it’s goodbye big box stores and hello bike lanes and landscaped sidewalks along Metacom Avenue.

Eventually, if all goes according to plan, the renewed economic prosperity of Metacom Avenue, highlighted by a purposeful mix of residential housing and commercial businesses, will become part of the solution to the problems seen along Market Street, where sea level rise threatens the entire area. Thus, the ambitious project has been dubbed “Market to Metacom”.

“This is about the quality of life here,” said Fred Massie, Planning Board Chairman in a recent interview. “You look at protecting your environment, and the environment expands beyond your natural environment. That includes the built environment too.”

Metacom makeover

Although the Metacom Avenue section of Warren only comprises about 81 acres of total land, it is home to about 55 businesses and 66 housing units and brings in over $1 million in tax revenue to the town each year.

However, according to Bob Rulli, Warren’s Director of Planning and Community Development, the existing utilization of Metacom leaves much to be desired. Most of the land is impervious asphalt, businesses are relegated to a swath of disjointed, isolated buildings with haphazard parking and too many curb cuts. What results is a traffic-plagued stretch of pavement that channels high levels of untreated stormwater runoff into the Kickemuit River.

Mr. Rulli hopes to change the future of development along Metacom through the zoning change just approved by the Planning Board and by implementing form-based code for developers hoping to move into the area. Essentially, this would create a standardized list of coding requirements for new developments located on Metacom Avenue. If developers comply to the new codes, the town could expedite certain elements of their application to incentivize desired types of developments in the area.

Examples of the kinds of requirements for future developments in the area include limiting curb cuts to enter/exit lanes only (when possible), reducing the speed limit depending on the density of surrounding development, requiring a certain number of trees and landscaped islands to break up long stretches of parking spaces, and prohibiting building facades of more than 50 contiguous feet. And if those limitations didn’t get the point across that big box stores need not apply for space in the future of Metacom Ave, a provision in the zoning amendment specifically prohibits them.

Another big change would be to transform Metacom Avenue itself from a four-lane road into a three-lane road, with a turning lane in the middle and bike lanes on either side. New developments would also be required to construct or restore sidewalk access along Metacom, so that all factors combined would create a pedestrian-friendly corridor.

Mr. Rulli is also reimagining how large developments would be established in the area. Once the area is designated as a special revitalization district, it opens up the possibility of using tax-incremental financing to fund large developments, such as the large project currently under development at the National Grid site, referred to as the Warren Gateway.

He points to the existing Ocean State Job Lot parcel on Metacom, where a barren parking lot dominates a large area of land, as an example of a parcel that could be reimagined in a way that would add value and beauty to the town. He has presented renderings of a mixed-use parcel featuring a 35-unit apartment building, an assortment of mixed-use commercial and residential buildings, and a 500 to 750-seat performance theatre, with lots of trees and manicured landscaping throughout. He has outlined multiple lots where similar opportunities exist along Metacom.

Mr. Rulli estimates that the changes proposed could result in an increase of $1.23 million in tax revenue for the town. But in addition to that, he believes it’s the right thing to do from a town planning perspective.

“This is not just zoning, it’s taking bad planning and architecture from the 1950s and 1960s and ripping the scab off it and thinking not just how do we make this better, but how can we make this better for the neighborhoods on either side,” he said.

Saving Market Street

Data projecting sea-level rise presented by Mr. Rulli throughout the past year and a half shows that significant portions of Market Street and its surrounding area, one of the places of lowest elevation in Warren, will be permanently flooded in just 14 years. By 2035, he estimates that the town will lose 58 properties to flooding, amounting to $200,000 lost in annual tax revenue and displacing 86 residents just due to natural sea level rise. By 2050, that jumps to 75 properties lost and 182 residents displaced.

The situation gets more dire when factoring in the possibility of a large storm, which are occurring more regularly as the effects of climate change continue to accelerate. The data shows that, should a 100-year storm incident occur in combination with the natural sea level rise present by 2035, it would cause nearly $9 million in total economic impact to the town. As you may imagine, the situation gets exponentially more perilous as time marches on.

The 184-acre section of Market Street that is highlighted in the plan includes approximately 400 buildings, 700 residential property units and 30 businesses, which brings in about $2.4 million in tax revenue annually for the town. Naturally, Mr. Rulli said that being proactive in this situation would be more prudent than being reactive.
Part of the solution for Market Street involves a four-phase process (over the course of 50-70 years) of removing existing structures located within the heart of the flood zone and replacing them with reclaimed wetlands. This would serve two purposes of mitigating the immediate area threatened, but also safeguarding the area with a natural flood buffer for many more years and decades to come.

Obviously, affected residents and commercial entities would need to find a new home elsewhere. Ideally, they would find that home within the re-developed Metacom Avenue, where by that time, more residential and commercial opportunities will be available.

Certainly, the projected cost of this process is likely to cause some sticker shock. Mr. Rulli projects it to be about $138.3 million (over the course of about 80 years). However, Mr. Rulli points out that a majority of this funding could be covered by federal government programs from the EPA, FEMA, the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the local Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank.

What happens next?

This is very much still the beginning phase of the reimagining of Market Street and Metacom Avenue. The Town Council meeting on Tuesday, August 10 will represent the first of two public information sessions on the special revitalization district for Metacom, and there is one more public information session on the whole Market to Metacom project planned for September. You can learn more about the plan at Facebook.com/MarketToMetacom.
“The project is so significant in its scale and its scope, we want to be overly intent on keeping the public participating,” said Mr. Rulli.

Mr. Massie was effusive in his praise for the concept during last week’s planning board meeting.
“It is a wonderful and long reaching concept that is really the bedrock of what a planning board is about and what a town should do,” he said. “It is forward thinking, particularly in light of the flood zone that we are in. It is thoughtful in terms of the existing residents and the future of Warren. It checks all the boxes, really, for me.”