The depave movement, at least in some places, is gaining momentum, but not in Rhode Island, where we like to smother the natural world under widened highways, oversized homes, solar panels, and parking lots.
This rabid obsession is on full display on Moshassuck Street in Pawtucket, where developers and local officials want to turn the only public park in the city’s Woodlawn neighborhood into an asphalt wasteland.
Morley Field resides in the lowest-scoring city neighborhood when it comes to tree cover and green space. In fact, the neighborhood has one of the lowest scores in all of Rhode Island.
Three-plus years ago, city officials introduced the idea of selling Morley Field for half a million dollars, so the only green space in an environmental justice neighborhood could be turned into a parking lot for a redeveloped distribution center next door.
Pawtucket City Council member Clovis Gregor, local residents, advocates, and the Conservation Law Foundation have since been fighting the proposal.
(In July and again in November CLF sent letters to the National Park Service, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, and the city of Pawtucket outlining its concerns with the project.)
The Woodlawn neighborhood, along the Providence line and the banks of the Moshassuck River, is 74% people of color, with 59% living at or below the poverty line. Nearly 30% of the neighborhood’s population is children.
The park offers the city’s only public access to the Moshassuck River without having to cut through a cemetery. This slice of green space in a highly developed neighborhood has been locked behind a chain-link fence since 2021.
The city has claimed that redevelopment is necessary because of the neglected and dangerous state of Morley Field. Ironically, the park is trashed because it’s a property City Hall abandoned in a neighborhood the city doesn’t seem to care about.
Rhode Island likes to take from those with the least to make those with more happy.
“At what point will a state agency or a federal agency say enough is enough? You know, like we have reached capacity for this watershed and you can’t develop anymore, and we haven’t seen that yet,” Kate McPherson, Save The Bay’s riverkeeper, said last month during an interview about a hotel project in Bristol. “And the case that comes to mind is Morley Field. I mean, if you look at the Moshassuck River, I think that really illustrates a great point. Morley Field is the last scrap of green space on the Moshassuck in Pawtucket, and Pawtucket wants to pave it. If you want to talk about cumulative impacts and the literal last spot of green space, that’s a great example.”