Oakland Beach is a neighborhood with mainly smaller houses. This house is on Bay Avenue. Journal photo / Ruben W. Perez

In the first week of spring, Oakland Beach’s waterfront area was a busy place. Despite a chill in the air, the sunshine brought out walkers and bicyclists, although others preferred to sit inside their cars and look out onto the water.

A few steps from the beach, at Iggy’s Doughboys and Chowder House, owner David Gravino was overseeing a crew readying his newly rebuilt restaurant, a Rhode Island institution, for Thursday’s reopening.

At the Warwick Cove Marina, owner John Williams was also preparing for the summer season, talking with a woman about renting a slip.

Oakland Beach is a neighborhood of mainly smaller houses, including many cottages and bungalows, most on small lots. Some of the houses look weather-beaten; others are the subject of recent renovation or repainting. But from most locations, it is quick walk to the water, and the beach is the unofficial neighborhood center.

“A lot of people have lived here forever,” said Jerry Myers, who said he has lived in Oakland Beach “all my life.” Williams’ marina office is also his home. “I live right here. It helps my expenses,” said Williams, a New Hampshire native who said he bought the marina in 1994.

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And Gravino, who grew up in another Warwick neighborhood, Greenwood, has a special fondness for Oakland Beach. His parents bought the restaurant in 1989 and renamed it Iggy’s; before that, his father, the late Gaetano “Guy” Gravino, worked for the previous owners, when the eatery, which first opened in 1924, was known as Mrs. Gus’s.

Most of the neighborhood was developed in the years after World War I. A trolley line helped Oakland Beach become a thriving summer resort before extensive damage was inflicted by the Hurricane of 1938, and further destruction wrought by Hurricane Carol in 1954 cemented the decline.

But Gravino believes the neighborhood will see a revival; in addition to his new restaurant, he said he is planning to invest in a miniature golf course, bumper boats and an ice cream shop on land he owns near Iggy’s.

Last week, there were 35 single-family houses for sale in Oakland Beach, ranging in price from $79,900, for a two-bedroom, 946-square-foot cottage at 517 Oakland Beach Ave., built in 1875, to $449,900, for a 1989 contemporary-style house at 46 Sheffield St. Six of the lower-priced listings were identified as bank-owned properties, and one was a short sale. A majority of the listings were priced under $200,000, and four were under $100,000.

Higher-priced listings included several newer houses: one, a 2004 Colonial with four bedrooms, three full baths and one half baths, at 451 Pequot Ave., was listed at $271,900.

POPULATION: (Warwick, 2000)

MEDIAN HOUSE PRICE: (Warwick, 2007) $230,000

PUBLIC SCHOOLS: Oakland Beach Elementary

NTERESTING FACT: A neighborhood group, the Oakland Beach Carousel Foundation, was formed to bring a new carousel to Oakland Beach. A carousel with hand-carved wooden horses and calliope music, a longtime focus of the Oakland Beach midway, was sold in the 1970s.

cdunn@projo.com