Council Approves Canonchet Executive Summary

With little fanfare, the Narragansett Town Council took about 75 minutes on Monday night to approve an executive summary guidelines for the Canonchet Farm master plan, only altering Planning Board suggestions in minor ways.

Among the aspects endorsed by the town council, they instructed staff to pursue a bike path and the associated state funds. (See the attached PDF from the town for the plan details.)

The one area of difference from the Planning Board came when the council evaluated the employee parking lot. The lot is across the road from the beach, and abuts Lake Canonchet.

Councilor Chris Wilkens said he didn’t want to cut any of the town’s current lots, given the crunch for parking in the area already. He added that the current lot had “tremendous potential for expansion.”

“We need those lots,” he said. “The noise you’ll be hearing is flushing thousand dollar bills [in lost beach parking revenue].”

Wilkens stressed that he envisioned a larger, nicer lot.

“Parking lots are not what they used to be,” he said. “They can be very attractive if they’re landscaped properly.”

By a 4-1 margin, the council voted to keep the current lots and to expand the landscaping.

When it came to the bike path, Council President Glenna Hagopian voted against the rest of the council, which voted 4-1 in favor of pursuing a path.

Hagopian cited increased maintenance costs as a reason to be cautious.

“Conceptually for me, a bike path brings additional costs – police, fire, control type activity,” she said. “My preference would be to see how big of a resource consumption that would be before going forward on that.”

However, Town Manager Grady Miller said other towns and environmental groups would aggressively go after the $1.2 million in funds for the project if Narragansett passed.

“There are other competing interests that are going after that same pot of money,” he said. “We’ve heard that West Kingston wants to do an extension or a spoke out there [off an existing path] … It behooves the council to act quickly.”

He added, “The longer we wait on this, the more competition there is going to be for this.”

Of course, there was little fanfare at the meeting because no public comment was allowed, which brought a groan from the crowd of about 25. One audience member mumbled, “Then why are we here?”

However, according to the Planning Board proposal, plenty of public opinion on the proposal had already been sought. According to the Planning Board, more than 100 members of the public had been heard at 17 meetings since May 2009.

The council voted for the final Canonchet Farm Master Plan to be completed by staff instead of a consultant.

Town employees would take the comments from the council’s meeting Monday and form the master plan, which would then be ratified by the council. The master plan would then be handed back to the Planning Board for specific development plans on landscaping and other aspects.

What are your thoughts about the Canonchet Farm proposal? Let us know in the comments!