Carpionato wins zoning change

CRANSTON, R.I. — The real estate development company Carpionato Group has won a custom rezoning of the prominent site in the city’s commercial center that is expected to be vacated by Citizens Bank.

Carpionato says that it wants to redo the leased building at 100 Sockanosset Cross Rd. for a combination of offices, retail stores and upper-story residential units with the architectural and merchandising spirit of its nearby mixed-use Chapel View complex.

Kelly Coates, Carpionato senior vice president, has ruled out the introduction of a Home Depot or Lowe’s home improvement store to the potential project at 100 Sockanosset Cross Rd. although the new custom zone would allow either. He has said that those particular stores would not fit the environment that Carpionato seeks.

Taking him at his word, the City Council rebuffed an attempt to amend a rezoning ordinance to keep out a Home Depot or Lowe’s. The council voted 8 to 1 Monday to rezone the site from manufacturing and open space to C-5 commercial with a special list of permitted uses.

The special list omits some uses allowed in C-5, such as a restaurant with a drive-through and a pawn shop, and includes some uses disallowed in C-5, such as live/work loft space, brewery or distillery and personal services establishments.

The rezoning ordinance also would allow taller buildings than usual, up to 100 feet high, or the equivalent of six stories. The building is two stories now and Coates has said that Carpionato wants to save as much of its investment in the structure as possible. Some demolition would be called for, he has said, to accommodate a taller residential building.

The “sea of asphalt” that accommodates Citizens Bank parking at 100 Sockanosset Cross Rd. will be reduced, Coates has said, and a parking garage put up.

Citizens has a lease on 100 Sockanosset Cross Rd. until Nov. 30, 2018, with options to extend its occupancy, but the bank has said that it intends to move to a corporate campus that it wants to develop in Johnston.

Councilman Steven A. Stycos, D-Ward 1, and Paul Durfee, a co-owner of Durfee’s hardware store near Rolfe Square, worried aloud about the fate of Durfee’s if a large-scale home improvement store featuring hardware, such as Home Depot or Lowe’s, is built on the 22.9-acre site.

“We have a great local hardware store that we should not be putting out of business,” Stycos declared. He offered an amendment that would eliminate “home improvement center” as a permitted use in the rezoning, but that motion failed on a 7-to-2 vote.

Commented Councilman Donald Botts Jr., R-Ward 2, “Zoning is not used to pick winners or losers.” It is meant, he said, to implement the Cranston Comprehensive Plan and Future Land Use Map. The C-5 designation fulfills both, the city Plan Commission has advised.

Traffic at the nearby intersection of Route 37, Sockanosset Cross Road and Pontiac Avenue is a preoccupation of both doubters and supporters of Carpionato’s plans.

At the Monday council meeting, Coates repeated reassurances that the severely bottlenecked intersection will be improved in conjunction with the redevelopment of the parcel. Whatever Carpionato proposes, he pointed out, will have to pass muster with the city Traffic Commission and R.I. Department of Transportation.

—gsmith@providencejournal.com

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