Work Progresses at Shannock Village - January 28th, 2023

By Cynthia Drummond for BRVCA
January 28th, 2023

RICHMOND – After decades of neglect, the center of Shannock Village is now being cleaned up and brought back to life.

Listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, the village contains important examples of mid-19th Century Greek revival architecture, including homes built for the mill owners, George H. Clark and his son, George P. Clark. 

Bordered by the Pawcatuck River and known for the iconic Horseshoe Falls dam, the village spread across the river into Charlestown back when the mill, the Columbia Narrow Fabrics Company, expanded. 

The Clarks sold the mills in 1964 and the Columbia Narrow Fabrics mill closed in 1968.

The Shannock Mill Project

The goals of the Shannock Mill Project are ambitious: clean up and repurpose the site, and redevelop the property, which is just under three acres, as mixed - use.

The man behind the Shannock Mill revitalization is the property owner, Jeffrey Marlowe, who, in 2020, received $235,280 from the Brownfield and Economic Development Fund of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. An earlier grant of $429,000, also from RIDEM’s Brownfield and Economic Development program, was already in place to fund the initial remediation work.

In addition to the former mill property, Marlowe owns three nearby buildings. He is also planning to open a café in one of the buildings.

“Nothing fancy,” he said of the café. “We want to use locally grown and milled grains keeping either a flatbread or pizza as our base, it’s possible to do a decent job with a small staff making the dough in-house so that it’s something special – high hydration using a natural leavening that results from a sourdough starter.”

Marlowe lives in Newport, but at one time, he lived in one of the houses that overlook the mill property and he still appreciates the historic qualities of the village.

“I bought some property here in the late ‘80s,” he said. “I was working for a company in Hope Valley and I was living in Newport at the time. I had a junk car, a cheap car, I was in my 20s, and so I needed a place that I could be a little closer to my work in Hope Valley and there was a cheap rental here in the village and I found it and I moved in.  About the same time there was a couple of properties for sale down the street.”

Marlowe bought those properties and began rehabbing them.

“…It was a real homesteading mentality here in the village,” he recalled. “People were buying property. It was cheaper than anywhere else in the area, but you had to manage a water system and everything else that went along with that, and the sense of community was really something special. We were trying to keep this whole thing up and going, keeping a water system that was completely put together with plastic well pipe, galvanized steel pipe and some copper tubing. Every time the water pressure would be turned up so people with second floor showers could get some pressure, we’d blow out another leak. Neighbors would have to run around, figure it out, and the sense of community that was developed during that stage was something that I’ve never seen or felt anywhere else.”

The first step in re-developing the village was modernizing the water system, and in 2013, under the guidance of Geoffrey Marchant, the Director of the Community Development Consortium at the time, the Shannock Water District completed a new, $1.7 million water system.

Marlowe purchased the mill property at the center of the village in the spring of 2020. He didn’t know then what he would do with the parcel, but he believed the time was right to get the remediation started.

“I was frustrated nothing was happening with the site, and I was concerned that if DEM reallocated this funding, it would tarnish the community’s standing for any future remediation funding and we’d be stuck with this hole in the middle of the village a site that would remain contaminated and unusable.”

Unfortunately, after sitting vacant for 50 years, the mill building, and several adjacent structures, could not be saved.

“Our history in the village is, we’ve tried to save these structures as much as we could, because an existing building is always the greenest one, but in this case, there wasn’t much savable about them,” he said. “The exterior masonry walls had extensive water damage and if we had tried to reinforce the walls, it would have been like building a new building inside an old one.”

In addition to taking down the crumbling buildings, the team had to remove all the trash that had been dumped on the property; refrigerators, couches, underground storage tanks and 125 tires.

Soil remediation work was the first task to be initiated. Some of the soil had been contaminated with oil, so that had to be dug up and removed. The remaining contaminated soil is scheduled for removal this spring.

The next challenge involved finding a contractor to remove the asbestos and demolish the building ruins.

“The actual physical work takes a matter of days, but the paperwork to get everything in order for the asbestos abatement approval and the demolition permits, those just take months and months,” Marlowe said.

Once the site has been cleared and remediated, Marlowe is proposing to build homes and two commercial spaces.

“Our goal is to create something special right here in the middle of the village,” he said. “And this is what is so common with brownfield sites. Typically, they’re located in important areas. They’re in the center of town or on a waterfront or in this case both. And if you can get them cleaned up and repurposed, they can really have a positive effect on the surrounding community.”

The plan calls for workforce housing, with public, riverfront access. Of the 14 planned housing units, four will be deeded affordable, but Marlowe said even the market-priced units will be reasonably priced.

“What’s needed most in South County is that ‘missing middle,’” he said. “The missing middle is duplexes, maybe townhouses, small cottages, bungalows in the 1,200-square foot range that are still affordable.”

Green space and “village scale” businesses are also planned. Commercial spaces would include small retail and arts and crafts production studios and a coffee shop. The green space would provide public access to the river, and the plans include a pedestrian bridge that would link both sides of the village.

Marlowe has not yet appeared before the Richmond Planning Board, however, Town Planner Shaun Lacey said the town would be considering a comprehensive permit, which requires that 25 % of the housing units on the property be deeded affordable – something the proposed plan already includes.

“Comprehensive permits would need to set aside a minimum of 25% the total number of units to be designated as affordable,” he said. “The remainder of the units themselves would be market rate. I think it is interesting, and maybe notable, to mention that all the units in their entirety, especially the large buildings, they’re not especially large dwelling units individually, so I think Jeff’s belief is that even a market rate home in Shannock Village, would, I think, lend itself to a great starter home opportunity for new home-buyers that live in the region.”

The project has also received support from the Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed Association, which, in 2013, built a fish ladder to allow migratory fish to pass over the dam.

WPWA Executive Director Christopher Fox said his experience working in the village had convinced him that its revitalization, while worthwhile, is a complex, long term project.

“Something’s always getting started, work is always being done,” he said. “It’s usually at a slow pace, because of funding, but always continues to push forward. …My understanding is, a handful of people who live in and love the village looked at the whole big picture of the village and said, ‘this is all the things that need to happen to bring this village back to the heart of the community that it once was’.”

What began with Geoffrey Marchant putting together the funding for the water supply has continued to grow with Marlowe’s vision.

“One of the things I really love about the village of Shannock’s overall revitalization is that you have different people championing different aspects of bringing that village back to a gold standard of a revitalized industrial village that could have just completely fallen apart,” Fox said.

Marlowe and the town are currently considering options for a road through the mill property.

“The town of Richmond would like to see the re-development  include a drive-through,” he said. “In other words, you would come in maybe right across from North Road and then drive through, versus a cul de sac.”

Amtrak owns the land that would be necessary for the construction of a drive-through. Lacey said he and Marlowe had agreed that the ideal solution would be a second point of access, which would require agreement from Amtrak.

“Considering the proposal and the design concept and the site layout that was presented, two points of access, certainly in my mind, would better serve the site,” he said.

Fox said he respected Marlowe for persisting with his project and overcoming state and municipal roadblocks.

“Any profiteer would have given up long ago,” he said. “It’s just that history is a clear indication that he’s doing this because of his love of the village, not because of his love of the almighty dollar.”