The Providence Steamboat tugboat Resolute leaves the docks of Promet Marine Services Corp. Businesses along Allens Avenue, such as Promet, provide services in fuel oil, gasoline, jet fuel, road salt, asphalt and ship repair.

The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

PROVIDENCE — When Joel and David Cohen look out on their Allens Avenue shipyard, they see workers painting or repairing row after row of Coast Guard cutters, fishing boats, a schooner and a tugboat. But just beyond, they can see the looming downtown condominium towers.

The Cohen brothers love their work boats. But they are scared of the condos.

The Cohens and other businessmen on Allens Avenue fear a city development plan that would fill the waterfront with hotels, condominiums and restaurants and push the heavy industries south toward Fields Point. The plan has been brewing for years, and it picked up major headway this summer.

The Cohens and other businessmen want the public to know that if their businesses are pushed out, the public will be hard-pressed to find fuel oil, gasoline, jet fuel, road salt, asphalt or ship repair services for 100 miles in every direction.

“People will come down in the morning and throw their light switches and nothing will happen,” says David Cohen, with a bit of exaggeration.

The Cohens, who own Promet Marine Services Corp., and their neighbors announced yesterday they have formed a new group called the Providence Working Waterfront Alliance. They set up a Web site at www.providenceworkingwaterfront.org and hired a public relations company, Advocacy Solutions.

The business members include Narragansett Improvement, Northeast Marine Pilots, the Oil Heat Institute of Rhode Island, Philips Services Corp., Providence Steamboat, Sprague Energy, and J. Goodison Co., a contractor that paints and repairs ships.

The Cohens date their presence on the waterfront back to their father’s and uncle’s scrap metal business in the 1930s. Some of the other businesses, they say, are 100 years old.

“And now we feel very threatened,” says Joel Cohen, as he gives a tour of the many vessels undergoing repairs. More than 100 people were working in the shipyard this week.

Four Coast Guard cutters from as far away as Puerto Rico were being painted. Their crews are doing the work, but Promet lifted their vessels out of the water and provided the cradles to support them, the nets to capture debris and other services.

A welder cut a bulkhead of rusty steel from a Point Judith fishing boat. Nearby, an entirely new stern had been fabricated and welded onto a New Bedford fishing boat. A machine shop crew completed a steel steering shaft. A 600-foot coal barge was fixed to the pier outside.

Joel Cohen pointed to a travel lift with a capacity of 400 metric tons and a price tag of $2 million. He’d like to get a larger one, but he’s not sure if that’s a good investment, considering the city’s intentions.

The worries began in 1999 when then-Mayor Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci announced his three “New Cities” plan for redeveloping Providence. A key part was redeveloping 1.3 miles of waterfront along Allens Avenue.

Before David N. Cicilline was elected mayor, the waterfront businessmen said they hosted him at their Propeller Club and he seemed sympathetic to their needs.

But the City Planning Department continued creating a new Comprehensive Plan that called for allowing high-end residential and commercial development in the industrial zone along Allens Avenue, despite objections from the businessmen.

Last month, the City Plan Commission endorsed the plan and sent it to the City Council. If the council approves the plan, zoning changes will follow.

The plan calls for pushing heavy industry farther south, and using the waterfront as a gateway to the city, welcoming cruise ships and ferries.

Cicilline was ill yesterday and unavailable for comment, according to his spokeswoman. City Planner Thomas Deller issued a statement by e-mail, saying the city will support the heavy industry on Allens Avenue.

“The goal of the comprehensive plan is to strengthen Providence’s waterfront as the city’s primary economic, cultural and natural resource,” Deller said. “While the relocation of Route I-195 opens up a new frontier of opportunities along Providence’s waterfront, supporting and sustaining our well-established waterfront industries is essential to the state’s economy and is a key provision of the comprehensive plan.”

But the businessmen don’t believe it. They have seen sketches and drawings that depict hotels and marinas, not shipyards and fuel terminals.

The Coastal Resources Center at the University of Rhode Island and the Coastal Resources Management Council, the state agency that regulates activities on Rhode Island’s coastline, are updating the state’s management plan for the Providence metropolitan area and they are well aware of conflicting visions for the future.

“There is a clash and some conflicting agendas between the Coastal Resource Center’s mandate to protect existing uses and the city’s goals for the waterfront from a tax viewpoint,” says Austin Becker, a coastal manager at the Coastal Resources Center.

Becker said he thinks to some extent both recreational and industrial uses could be accommodated. For instance, he said, you could locate a parking garage between the shipyard and a hotel. And, he said, Providence Harbor could accommodate more recreational boating. Most other New England ports are far busier.

But the Cohens disagree. You don’t want pleasure boats operating around tugs, they said. And they said the public doesn’t appreciate how vital the existing industries are to providing basic services to the state.

Promet repaired a barge for the Brayton Point power plant two years ago, just in time to keep it from running out of coal, David Cohen said. Welding sections for the I-95 bridge and repairs for the Sprague fuel terminal after the fire last year were done at Promet.

Millions of gallons of fuels are delivered through Sprague and Motiva.

The federal government spent $43 million dredging the Providence River in recent years, they said, and now people want to use the channel for pleasure boats? That’s like building a highway for a bikepath.

The Cohens insist there is no other place for their business to go. And even late in the day, their shipyard is noisy with generators, sandblasters, grinders and sweepers. Who would want to live next to that noise?

plord@projo.com