Business & Tech

Planning Commission Approves 'Frenchtown Commons' Master Plan

The development planned for Frenchtown Road on land straddling NK and East Greenwich would have a big box store, offices, and smaller retail stores.


The first piece in a complicated development puzzle was placed Tuesday when the North Kingstown Planning Commission approved the master plan for “The Commons at Frenchtown Road.”

In addition to the regular hurdles of a development of this size, this development has an added area of complexity because the 40-plus-acre property straddles both North Kingstown and East Greenwich.

The East Greenwich Planning Board held a hearing on the master plan Wednesday, but their vote on the plan won’t take place for at least a month.

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The development would include a big box store, an office building, smaller retail areas, and three stores with drive-thru lanes. The property wraps partially around the large former Brown and Sharpe building on Frenchtown Road west of Hunt River Commons (otherwise known as the Stop & Shop plaza).

The big box store, the office building and all three stores with drive-thrus are on the North Kingstown part of the property. Only about 25 percent of the land falls in East Greenwich. 

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At the hearing in East Greenwich on Wednesday, John Revens, lawyer for the developer, said there were no tenants yet for the development. 

"We don’t have a contract with anyone at this point," he said. "And you can’t get a contract with anyone like Target until you have all your approvals. We’re a long way from having any tenants."

Revens noted the many levels of approval that are needed on this project – not just from North Kingstown and East Greenwich, but also from the state, the Department of Transporation and the Department of Environmental Management.

"We’ve been at this for a year and a half and it’s probably going to take another year and a half to get through that process," Revens said.

Under East Greenwich parking ordinances, the buildings slated for the East Greenwich part of the property need additional parking. Under an agreement between the two towns, North Kingstown will "lend" East Greenwich the parking needed. This is from the East Greenwich Planning Department's review of the project:
"The combination of uses proposed for East Greenwich (the two-story mixed use building along with the freestanding retail and restaurant uses) would require 580 parking spaces under current code. Only 422 spaces are being provided on the East Greenwich side of the development. It would appear from these numbers that project is parking-deficient. However, the North Kingstown side of the development will essentially be “over-parked” (according to their Code) by about 500 spaces, making the total development, when viewed as a whole, more than compliant with the parking provisions in both communities. 

Master plan approval, while it sounds final, is really only an early inning for any project. It's a conceptual plan that, if approved, must then be fleshed out with all the engineering and regulatory hurdles that remain. 

The most immediate hurdle for the project is passage by the EG Planning Board of the master plan. The EG Town Council still needs to approve the town's new Comprehensive Plan, which speaks to the Frenchtown Commons development, before the Planning Board can act. That is expected to happen within the next few weeks.


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