{"id":256,"date":"2010-02-12T17:48:20","date_gmt":"2010-02-12T21:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/providenceworkingwaterfront.org\/index.php\/2010\/02\/12\/caparco-letter-response\/"},"modified":"2018-12-18T14:33:24","modified_gmt":"2018-12-18T18:33:24","slug":"caparco-letter-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/providenceworkingwaterfront.org\/index.php\/2010\/02\/12\/caparco-letter-response\/","title":{"rendered":"Response to Michael Caparco&#8217;s misleading Providence Journal letter to the editor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Caparco Sr.\u2019s Jan. 24th <em>Providence Journal<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.projo.com\/opinion\/letters\/content\/letters_01-24-10_01-24-10_4HH6O5V_v8.3f8d556.html\" target=\"_blank\">letter to the editor<\/a>, \u201cCity\u2019s fine waterfront plan,\u201d contains a number of inaccuracies and misleading statements.<\/p>\n<p>First, Mr. Caparco conveniently fails to note that the City of Providence\u2019s original plan was indeed to declare almost all of Allens Ave as &#8220;blighted and substandard,&#8221; a major step towards condemnation and eminent domain procedures.  It was only after the tremendous outcry of area business and property owners that the City agreed to scale back the plan.<\/p>\n<p>Second, Mr. Caparco\u2019s letter intentionally obfuscates the difference between ProvPort, which the City is protecting with a new Working Waterfront Protection Zone, and the northern Allens Ave waterfront where the City is in fact pushing to change the current W-3 zoning to allow for hotels.  The City&#8217;s waterfront plan would allow for an incompatible hotel directly in between an oil terminal, an asphalt plant, and a marine repair shipyard.  No deed or lease restrictions are going to prevent future hotel guests from complaining about the truck traffic, bright lights, and noise produced by the round the clock operation of these successful heavy industrial businesses.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, contrary to Mr. Capraco\u2019s claim, there are no \u201cabandoned\u201d lots on Allens Ave.  The once vacant property at 434 Allens Avenue is now being used by Rhode Island Recycled Metals to scrap the Russian submarine.  Next door at the Shepherd\u2019s warehouse site, Cumberland Farms employs 38 people and the company is exploring a number of options to revitalize the property. Far from \u201cabandoned,\u201d businesses along the approximately one mile stretch of Allens Avenue north of Thurbers employ more than 800 people and generate approximately $1.5 million in annual property and excise taxes for the City.<\/p>\n<p>There is one statement with which we agree with Mr. Caparco, that \u201cthere is simply too much potential along the city\u2019s waterfront for any of us to be misled into accepting an unacceptable status quo.\u201d  That\u2019s why the City should abandon its vision of incompatible hotel uses on Allens Avenue and instead promote marine industrial expansion and good blue collar jobs, just as they are rightly pursuing at ProvPort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Caparco Sr.\u2019s Jan. 24th Providence Journal letter to the editor, \u201cCity\u2019s fine waterfront plan,\u201d contains a number of inaccuracies and misleading statements. First, Mr. Caparco conveniently fails to note that the City of Providence\u2019s original plan was indeed to declare almost all of Allens Ave as &#8220;blighted and substandard,&#8221; a major step towards condemnation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/providenceworkingwaterfront.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/providenceworkingwaterfront.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/providenceworkingwaterfront.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/providenceworkingwaterfront.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/providenceworkingwaterfront.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/providenceworkingwaterfront.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/providenceworkingwaterfront.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/providenceworkingwaterfront.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/providenceworkingwaterfront.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}