Jack Sprengel, director of operations for the Quonset Development Corporation, gives a tour of Blue Beach.

The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

NORTH KINGSTOWN

If you don’t mind your beaches against a background of heavy industry, there is just the place to soak up some rays in Rhode Island — Quonset Point.

The unlikely pairing of modest stretches of sand and surf abutting a submarine shipbuilding manufacturer (General Dynamics, Electric Boat Division) or pool-filter maker (Goldline Controls) is common here, and nicer than it sounds.

The Quonset Development Corporation recently finished sprucing up four beaches on the 3,000-acre property it runs, adding parking lots, bike racks, picnic tables and plants.

Journal illustration / Tom Murphy

The work was required by the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council to ensure public access to coastal lands used for commercial and industrial purposes, and so far, the corporation has spent about a half-million dollars to make the beaches more user-friendly, and for their benefit, more manageable.

“This place was like a dust bowl,” said QDC director of operations Jack Sprengel on the 800-foot stretch of Compass Rose Beach near the Quonset Air Museum. “Now that we have these controls, it will be a much nicer place to come to.”

Since the Navy left in the 1990s, the beaches have been used regularly by employees at the industrial park for lunchtime strolls and members of the general public who knew about the off-the-beaten path beaches, Compass Rose, Blue and Spink’s Neck, each less than 1,500 feet in length.

The QDC has also created a parking lot and installed a bike rack 1.25 miles from Calf Pasture Point, which has a one-mile stretch of beach, although it's not currently open to the public. The town of North Kingstown is working with the federal government to clean up environmental contamination there.

The largely undeveloped 189-acre peninsula is planned for walking trails, Sprengel said.

According to Sprengel, the most popular beach is Compass Rose, which is off Roger Williams Way and within a few hundred feet of where vacationers catch the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard.

Compass Rose is also next to General Dynamics, where visitors can watch workers construct a towering submarine hull a couple of hundred feet away or get a view of the Jamestown Bridge across the water.

Sprengel dismissed the possibility of industrial waste runoff into the water, saying that the only discharge into Narragansett Bay is storm water.

“People fish here, people swim here,” he said.

About half a mile west lies Blue Beach, an old destination for Navy families, Sprengel said, where a pavilion and bath house used to stand in the place where Goldline manufactures pool filters.

Blue Beach is more picturesque than Compass Rose, largely because of the charming 760-foot crushed stone path along shade-providing trees and bushy vegetation built by the corporation. The 700-foot stretch of sand eventually runs into the Wickford town beach, with a reed-filled marsh providing a natural buffer.

Spink’s Neck Beach near Allen Harbor is a quiet, pretty spot where beach-goers will mingle with boaters from the nearby North Kingstown Marina. Off to the left is the beginning of Calf Pasture Point, to the right a pair of active piers, and a patch of land nearby houses American Mussel Harvesters.

Compass Rose, Blue and Spink’s Neck beaches are free and open to the public from dawn until dusk. Alcohol and open fires are not allowed. There is no lifeguard on duty and pets must be leashed.

ngarcia@projo.com

An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the beach at Calf Pasture Point was open to the public.