Directing the Providence Working Waterfront Alliance in opposition to the plan is David Cohen, right, president of Promet Marine Services on Allens Avenue. At left is Frank McMahon, president of Advocacy Solutions, a consultant to the alliance.

The Providence Journal / Connie Grosch

PROVIDENCE — Who will inhabit the Providence waterfront of the future? Will it be the existing shipyards, terminals and fuel companies along Allens Avenue? Or will the waterfront be a mixture of cafes, luxury condominiums and public access points?

The city’s Planning Department thinks that the Providence waterfront can be a mixed bag, with condos near industrial businesses, and room for all.

The two sides that are fighting over the waterfront’s future zoning designation, however, see the question as a black-or-white one: either it will be condos and commercial development, or it will be heavy industry. If allowed to coexist, one will eventually force the other out.

The battleground is the city’s updated Comprehensive Plan, the document that forms the basis for city zoning codes. In rewriting the document, the Planning Department has suggested that the area should be rezoned to mixed-use, which would allow residential and commercial development with the current industrial businesses.

A coalition of Allens Avenue businesses has banded together to oppose a change to mixed-use, and they sounded off against it with apocalyptic visions of the end of industry in Providence at a public hearing before the City Council last night at City Hall.

Some argued that because the area in question, from Davol Square to Thurbers Avenue, is half of the city’s only industrial stretch; if it were lost, the consequences to the economy and the city’s potential for storage of oil, gas and other needed commodities would be catastrophic.

“The Port of Providence is not just valuable waterfront property, nor is it just an economic engine,” said Julie A. Gill, acting executive director of the Oil Heat Institute of Rhode Island. “The Port of Providence is the lifeblood of the entire state, inclusive of the City of Providence and its citizens. If you destroy the Providence working waterfront, you will send the entire state into a deadly spiral, severely damaging its economy and far more importantly, the health and safety of its citizens. Are you willing to take that risk?”

While no one was saying that the business must leave even if the zoning is changed, business owners said they feel that if the zone change is allowed, and residents move in, industry will slowly, but inexorably, be forced out.

“This plan would create an untested mixed-use area. That, in my view, would sow the seeds of a conflict that would threaten to drive out long-existing, needed industrial uses that the city has long relied on,” said lawyer Sean O. Coffey, representing Promet Marine Services Corporation, an Allens Avenue shipyard.

Representatives of companies that reside along the waterfront say that the city’s industrial area and its deep-water port are a jewel in a modern city, and the highways cordon them off and create a natural industrial area for Providence. Let the rest of the city have condos and residential development, they say; if the industry is pushed out, there is no where else for it to go, and it will never return, they say.

Meanwhile, the condos that developers hope to put in their place are a “murky vision” at best, Coffey said.

But to Developer Patrick T. Conley, who wants to develop a marina, condos and hotel on land he owns on Allens Avenue, the existing “working waterfront” isn’t all its cracked up to be.

“This waterfront as it stands now is a disgrace,” he said.

At last night’s meeting, he passed around photos showing vacant lots and empty buildings along Allens Avenue, describing the industrial area as “tired and toxic,” and the photos as showing the “squalor and stagnation” that he says truly define the area.

The port area needs to redefine itself before it can thrive, he said.

“A port has to know its limitations before it can realize its strengths,” Conley said in written comments.

He said that he wants Providence residents to gain access to the waterfront.

“This Comprehensive Plan will open up the people’s waterfront. Bring the people down to the water. Let the people have the waterfront.”

While the waterfront discussion dominated the public hearing, some discussion on other parts of the plan snuck in periodically. Some residents came out to press the city to preserve open space along the waterfront; others encouraged the city to shift the areas included in planned “jobs-only” districts; and some felt that the plan needed to be revised because it was too friendly to developers.

But one theme that was sounded consistently by many speakers was dissatisfaction with the approval process for the Comprehensive Plan itself.

The approval process is structured in stages: this fall, the city intends to approve an interim Comprehensive Plan that would make major changes to the city’s overarching planning goals, and then each neighborhood would be examined in detail over the next two years. When the neighborhood reviews are completed, the city would revise the Comprehensive Plan, and make zoning changes in the individual neighborhoods.

Many argued that the neighborhood sections are the true core of the document, and that the plan should not be adopted until all the neighborhood meetings are completed.

“There is certainly no reason to rush this through now,” said William Touret, president of the College Hill Neighborhood Association. “This plan needs a great deal more discussion about where the city has been, where it is, but most importantly, where it is going.”

The Planning Department has consistently argued that the city will be in violation of state statutes if it does not pass a plan this fall, but several speakers last night doubted that the state would penalize Providence for trying to achieve a more complete plan, and others quoted sections of state law that they argue show that Providence would not be in danger of sanction.

The city’s current plan expired in May, but in order to create time for the review process, the city had intended to submit that plan for re-approval by the state this spring. The City Council approved that strategy in May, and most assumed that the state had followed suit.

But Planning Director Thomas E. Deller acknowledged last night that the plan was never resubmitted to the state after council approval this spring, a fact he said he learned only yesterday.

He said that a planning staffer had been told by state planning authorities not to bother resubmitting the plan, because the state did not see the value in reviewing and approving two plans in a short period of time. Deller said that the staffer did not inform him of this until last night. Deller said that he will contact the state this week to determine what the city’s next step should be.

dbarbari@projo.com