Changes to Town Council agenda – a sign of
open-mindedness to buying Whalerock land?
By Will Collette
Overnight, the
Town posted changes to the Town Council agenda for next Monday night. They
added a 5 pm Executive Session, which had not been posted before, and they
added this intriguing item under “New Business” for the 7 pm public meeting
8.a. Discussion and potential action
regarding the method of funding and the authorization of the Town Clerk and
Board of Canvassers to hold a special referendum for the potential land
acquisition of AP 17 Lot 186 for an amount not to exceed $2.7 million
AP 17, Lot 186
is the undeveloped 81 acre site where developer Larry LeBlanc is currently
proposing to build the Whalerock wind turbines and a mixed development of housing that would include affordable
units.
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| Time to buy the rock? |
Unless you have
been asleep for the past three years, you would know that this one piece
of land and the proposed uses for it have roiled this town.
We are in the middle of Charlestown’s summer drama, the seemingly endless series of hearings by the Zoning Board of Review (ZBR) on LeBlanc’s application for a Special Use Permit.
We are in the middle of Charlestown’s summer drama, the seemingly endless series of hearings by the Zoning Board of Review (ZBR) on LeBlanc’s application for a Special Use Permit.
Throughout the
years of rancor over this land, and especially this summer, as the ZBR drama
has unfolded, it became increasingly clear that there was only one positive ending
to this saga: acquisition
of LeBlanc’s property at a fair price to put it under public ownership and
preserved in perpetuity as open space.
This new agenda item
is a positive sign of movement in exactly that direction.
On December 31st,
LeBlanc
and his previously silent partner, James Barrows of Connecticut, signed a
sale-leaseback agreement. Under the deal,
Barrows pledged to pay LeBlanc $2 million for the property and LeBlanc pledged
to leaseback enough land to build the turbines, paying Barrows a portion of the
profits.
Barrows retained the right to develop the property not needed for the
turbines for, for example, the development
LeBlanc currently has in the works. The result would be two turbines in the
middle of a development, not unlike the NK Green project in North Kingstown
that went on-line last December.
The LeBlanc-Barrows deal
appeared to me to be more like a signal to the town for how much LeBlanc was
willing to consider for acquisition of the land. Click
here to read my analysis of what the land might be worth.
Charlestown
already has a voter-approved $3 million Open Space-Recreation (OSR) bond that is also
on the Council agenda (it may or may not be
unrelated to this late addition). There are also other sources of
funding that Charlestown could tap, such as the State’s open space bond money
and the town’s uncommitted surplus.
Even though
voters have already approved $3 million for Open Space-Recreation, Charlestown
set a precedent by requiring separate voter approval for the construction of
the new beach facilities at the two town beaches, rather than tap the OSR bond
money. Those facilities
won voter approval despite opposition from the CCA Party.
It looks like
the Council is thinking along those lines again.
We’ll bring you
more news as it become available. Also up-coming is our preview of Monday
night’s Council meeting which, until the changes to the agenda were posted in
the middle of the night, seemed to mean a pretty quiet Council meeting.