Council will bypass parking standards for Tai- O project

Councilors permit Middle School housing development to move forward with half the spaces required by zoning ordinance

WOONSOCKET – Despite warnings of making an already congested parking situation worse, the City Council Monday sharply relaxed the normal minimum parking requirements for the Central Falls company that wants to convert the old Woonsocket Middle School into an apartment complex.

The council voted 5-2 to allow the Tai-O Group to redevelop the shuttered Park Place schoolhouse into 104 one- and two-bedroom units with just one parking space per unit – half the usual zoning standard.

The vote marks the firsttime application of a law, passed by the council last year after Tai-O won the bid for the school, that allows the council to ease parking minimums on a case-by-case basis. It also means Tai-O has satisfied all the regulatory hurdles necessary to sign a purchase and sales agreement for the antiquated building, which it offered to buy for $470,000 over a year ago.

But the approval came after more than an hour of debate during which supporters of the waiver faced sharp opposition from their own colleagues on the panel, as well as Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt and Planning Director Joel Mathews.

The majority also beat back a proposed amendment by Councilman Christopher Beauchamp to set the parking minimum at 121 spaces – a figure Tai-O’s Chairman Louis Yip had already informally accepted – as well as a motion to table the proposal altogether until Tai-O’s fine-tuning of the redevelopment plan is finished.

Just last week, Yip and other Tai-O principals told councilors they were planning 59 single-bed, 34 twobed and 11 three-bed units in the complex. Shortly before the meeting, however, the mix changed – apparently in attempts to defuse the parking

issue – to 59 single-bed and 45 two-bed units.

Administration officials said residents of the many multifamily homes that ring the schoolhouse already struggle with insufficient off-street parking, including some who borrow space in the parking lot of the idle middle school.

“I just want to say that in fairness to the neighbors who live in the area I don’t think it’s right that we don’t know the number of vehicles this is going to generate,” Baldelli-Hunt said. “Two-bedroom units could potentially bring four people with four cars. I think it’s an issue – for quality of life, plowing, street-sweeping and all of that.”

Mathews warned the council that it was getting ahead of itself by considering a plan that, so far, provides too few details to determine how Tai-O intends to use all the outdoor and interior space associated with the 212,000-square-foot schoolhouse, which consists of several structures that were erected in phases over the years.

“We have no definitive scale drawings to base anything on,” Mathews said. “We shouldn’t have gotten this far not knowing a lot of things about this project – which buildings they’re going to use, what they’re going to do with the rest of the buildings.”

Beauchamp accused his colleagues of handling TaiO’s plan differently than any other redevelopment proposal he’s seen since he joined the council more than a decade ago.

“At this point where all speculating,” he said. “I don’t know any other project we’ve done since I’ve been on he council where we worried about parking after the fact.”

But Beauchamp’s motion to table the parking waiver pending more detail from Tai-O failed on a 5-2 vote.

Council proponents of the parking waiver made several arguments in support of the arrangement. Some pointed out that Mathews had already identified the availability of 110 parking spaces for the proposed apartment complex, which is more than the minimum required under the new law.

Councilors also noted that Yip has indicated a willingness to purchase other properties adjacent to the school and demolish any structures on them, if necessary, to create additional parking. Others asserted that Tai-O’s target market – younger professionals sometimes referred to as millennials, aren’t as keen on driving as their baby-boomer forebears, and that they trusted Yip to develop an apartment complex with sufficient parking purely because it’s in his interest to create a setting that’s attractive to potential tenants.

“They’re going to maximize the parking...it accrues to their benefit,” said Councilman James Cournoyer. “I have confidence they will do what they need to do...everything will work itself out in terms of getting the appropriate space.”

Voting in favor of the parking plan were Council President Dan Gendron, Council Vice President Jon Brien, Councilors Richard Fagnant, Denise Sierra and Cournoyer, while Councilwoman Melissa Murray sided with Beauchamp in opposing it.

The council also approved a related measure documenting Tai-O’s “affirmative commitment” to redevelop the school, with the expectation that the company will finalize a purchase and sales agreement with the city no later than April 27.

Tai-O won the bid for the abandoned, 116-year-old structure in February 2017 with an offer of $470,000, slightly less than a competing proposal from the Hawthorne Development Group in Burr Ridge, Ill. It was the latter offer favored by the Baldelli-Hunt administration, contending that Hawthorne’s

plan to convert the school into a full-spectrum, geriatric housing facility stood a better chance of success.

Hawthorne’s interest in the property predates that of Tai-O’s. Roughly two years ago, Baldelli-Hunt and former City Solicitor Michael Marcello said they were introduced to the principals of the company by a mutual friend from the local area and later flew out to Chicago to meet them in person. Members of the council later questioned whether the efforts to procure a bidder for the deteriorating schoolhouse had been properly advertised to all potential suitors and began advocating for an open request for proposals, essentially starting the search for buyers from scratch.

Principals of Hawthorne later traveled to the city to outline their plans for the school, but the meeting did little to quell the council’s concerns. The panel later voted to seek a new round of bids, which resulted in competing offers from Hawthorne and Tai-O. Hawthorne offered $30,000 more – but councilors favored the Blackstone Valley company’s plan for housing millennials over Hawthorne’s mix of assisted living, nursing home and over-55 units.