To the editor:

On July 3, 2020, five East Providence residents created Keep Metacomet Green. Our goal was to save the iconic Metacomet golf club from commercial development. To accomplish this goal, we hoped to convince the City to purchase the site for use as a public golf course and municipal park. None of us played golf. None of us was an immediate abutter. We had no skin in the game other than as residents concerned with the quality of life of our community.

Mind you, the City could have seized the property years ago for unpaid taxes and water bills. Metacomet would have cost us next to nothing. Aside from infrastructure improvements, fees from golfing and events would have paid for upkeep and maintenance. Why they chose not to is still a mystery.

KMG offered a number of ideas to accomplish this goal. We compiled data showing that a bond to purchase the site would cost the average property taxpayer the equivalent of a monthly Starbucks latte. We urged the City take the property by eminent domain, and we implored the City Council to add an advisory referendum to the 2022 ballot to Let the Voters Decide. Over 1,000 EP residents signed a petition presented to the Council, but without success.

The City took no action to save Metacomet from development. In July 2021, the Council amended the Comprehensive Plan to allow for a zoning change from Open Space to a subdistrict of the Waterfront District and then made that zone change. In December 2023, the Waterfront Commission approved the project that calls for a 5-year buildout of 153,000sf of retail/commercial space, then another 5-year buildout of 890 residential units.

Although our goal of preserving Metacomet has not succeeded yet, KMG has had its share of successes. In September 2020, after extraordinary public opposition, the developer withdrew its initial application. The new plan submitted several months later included the deed-restricted 9-hole public golf course, now known as Met Links, and 9.6 acres deeded to the City for public use. The developer also committed to not building a hotel on the site.

KMG fought for an archaeological survey of the Metacomet site, in recognition of its place in history as an archaic living place of indigenous peoples. An initial survey was done, leading to a second phase, and now a third that may also include the Veterans Memorial Parkway.

In recent weeks, the Council was presented with a draft 2025-2035 Comprehensive Plan. Inexplicably, language in the current Plan that acknowledges the historic and cultural significance of the Parkway had been stripped from the new Plan. KMG fought to have the protective language restored, and it has been.

The project goes next to State agencies that will determine whether a roundabout and expanded lanes will be constructed on the Parkway at Lyon Avenue. This is the developer’s solution to accommodate the thousands of additional daily vehicle trips that will be generated by the development. KMG will be there to argue that all rules and regulations regarding development along the Parkway require that projects be limited to its traffic capacity, not the other way around. With support from various groups concerned with historic preservation, we will work to advance the nomination of the Parkway to the National Register of Historic Places where it belongs.

Since July 2020, our membership has grown from five to over 3,000, and we’re still growing as the ramifications of this massive development on our community’s quality of life become a reality. We will be here as long as we need to be. For more information, please contact me at kmg4ep@gmail.com.

Candy Seel
Co-Founder, Keep Metacomet Green