PROVIDENCE -- Providence officials are looking to grow the city's economy by looking to the water.
The city's Department of Planning and Development is proposing a new working waterfront protection zone to cover two-and-a-half miles that make up the Providence waterfront along Narragansett Bay.
The zone runs from Fields Point to Thurbers Avenue and is designed to protect jobs and encourage economic growth at the Port of Providence.
"We do really need to change the zoning to make sure that this area is reserved for marine businesses and businesses that can access the asset that we have here -- the deep water channel," said Bonnie Nickerson, director of long range planning for the city of Providence.
The protection plan calls for no residential development. The zoning change will not apply to property north of Thurbers Avenue.
Joel Cohen, vice president of Promet Marine Services, a company that's been on Allens Avenue for the past 35 years, said there's already a working waterfront in Providence and the city should protect them.
"We're doing the same sorts of endeavors that they are doing in ProvPort (a non-profit group that runs the Port of Providence). We have all the same industrial types of businesses. We have more employment then they have down there," Cohen said.
Cohen fears that that the city will designate the area of his business as blighted and substandard.
"That's a buzzword to allow the (Providence Redevelopment Agency) to set up standards so that over a 40-year period, they can just lay back and pick off properties as they see fit," he said.
Nickerson said that there are no plans to take any property.
"What we'd like to do is remove some restrictions that have limited businesses from moving into the area. In the past two decades, there has been very limited growth," she said.
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