Mega-Apartment Plan Emerging for Vacant Fruit and Produce Market Land

Name: Go Local Prov
Price range: $

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

GoLocalProv

Super developer Carpionato Group is rolling out plans for a development for the Furit and Produce Building land. The property has been vacant for nearly a decade.

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As GoLocal reported in May of 2014, to date the property has not been developed.

Following its purchase of the warehouse from the state -- and controversial demolition of the historic property in 2008 -- Carpionato, the Johnston-based commercial real estate firm, had presented plans to turn the former fruit market into a mixed used office, retail and hotel development, which have not materialized. The city granted Carpionato preliminary approval for a surface parking lot at the location in 2013.

The former Providence Fruit and Produce Warehouse on Harris Avenue, which was demolished in 2008 -- and undeveloped since.

"It was then my belief and seems now to be confirmed, that Carpionato always intended to create a parking lot on that site and nothing more," said real estate agent Erik Bright, who is the Director of PCIS (Providence Creative Industrial Space) and was active in opposing the demolition of the historic Harris Avenue building.

The Rhode Island Department of Transportation, which had acquired the Fruit and Produce building in 1998 for $14 million, sold the property to Carpionato in 2005 for $4.3 million with the understanding the property would be rehabilitated.

However, in 2010, the Federal Highway Administration demanded from Rhode island repayment of over $4 million of the $14 million in federal money spent on the purchase, citing the failure in attaining "fair and equitable compensation" for the sale of the property. According to news reports, the state agreed to pay Carpionato $600,000 last summer to buy back a portion of the land for transportation and Amtrak related purposes.

Now a Mega Project

The project would incldue more than 450 apartments, a major parking garage, and would be located at 100 Harris Avenue