The former Shooters property in India Point might be rezoned, but the state Department of Transportation is advising against it. The agency said it’s required by Federal Highway Administration to sell it at fair market price.

The Providence Journal / Andrew Dickerman

PROVIDENCE — With the state preparing to put the waterfront site of the former Shooters Nightclub on the market sometime later this year, the area’s councilman and many neighborhood residents are backing a plan to change the zoning of the site so that commercial or residential development would be impossible.

Councilman Seth Yurdin is proposing changing the zoning from a mixed-use waterfront district to public space, largely as a tactic to prevent the state from selling the site to a potential condo developer.

At a public hearing last night at City Hall attended by roughly 50 people, East Side residents came out to show their support for the zoning change, and express their fears that a sale would lead to high-rise condo development on the waterfront, thus cutting city residents off from Narragansett Bay.

The state Department of Transportation, which owns the site, stridently opposes the zone change, and is hinting at legal action if the city goes through with it. The state plans to knock down the vacant nightclub building at the site and sell it to help pay for the Route 195 relocation project.

With the neighborhood and the state both so heavily invested in the issue, Mayor David N. Cicilline is pushing a compromise proposal where the council would hold off on rezoning the land and the DOT would agree not to put it up for sale until after the city holds a planning charette to discuss the future of the Providence waterfront, currently scheduled for the end of April.

If the city can secure some kind of assurance from the DOT that the property will not be put up for sale before May or June, then Cicilline’s plan looks like the most likely outcome at this point, said council members and city officials.

Planning Director Thomas E. Deller said he is in talks to secure those guarantees from the state right now. He also said that fears of a quick sale are overstated; because of the protracted nature of the sale process, the state could not even advertise a sale until probably May or June. State lawyer Michael D. Mitchell confirmed that the process would take months before advertising the property was possible.

The six-acre Shooters (later Bootleggers) property at Corliss Landing was bought by the state for $4.7 million in 2000, and the area has been used for the highway project, both as a staging area and as buildable land.

Although some of the property was used for the highway, the state wants to sell the remaining land, roughly four acres. The DOT estimates the market value of the property to be more than $3 million.

Mitchell warned that if the city goes through with its proposed zone change, it could find itself in court against the state. For the city to change the zoning on state-owned land, and thus affect its value, could amount to an illegal taking.

Mitchell also said that the state bought the property with federal dollars, and is obligated under the terms of its agreements to sell the property for the best possible price.

The Federal Highway Administration has also weighed in, saying in a letter from realty officer J. Michael Butler that the zoning change is “confiscatory and unreasonable.”

Butler also wrote that the original acquisition of the site in 2000 used 90 percent federal money, on the condition that whatever was left over after the Route 195 project be sold at market value and the proceeds used to help pay for the highway project.

The community seemed uninterested in the legal wrangling between the state and the federal government, and more concerned with the future of access to the waterfront. More than 20 community members spoke in favor of the zoning change last night, one by one arguing that the zoning change is needed before the DOT sells the land to the neighborhood’s bugaboo: condo developers.

Instead, most said they wanted the land joined to adjacent India Point Park, and opened to the entire city as parkland.

The waterfront is a community resource, many said, and the entire city must be given access, not just the residents of an upscale condo tower.

“We need our sun, and we need to see the water, and everybody in Providence needs access,” said Carolyn Swift.

David Riley, president of the Friends of India Point Park, said that residential development at the site, outside the hurricane barrier, is a dangerous proposition that must be avoided.

Henry Sharpe, whose family donated the land to create India Point Park 40 years ago, said that this community resource must be preserved.

“There are thousands of people in this city, particularly in Fox Point and in the neighborhoods of the South Side, who desire to take advantage of the presence of the Bay,” Sharpe said in pressing for the zoning change.

However, Jef Nickerson, head of the urban-growth group Greater City: Providence, urged the city to stick by its planning process and not rezone now, arguing that any zoning changes that precede the waterfront charette would set a dangerous precedent.

“We submit that it is premature to consider any ad-hoc zoning changes to these waterfront lots until the highest and best use of the entire Providence waterfront is decided in a charette format,” Nickerson wrote in a letter to the mayor and other city officials.

Providence lawyer Andrew Teitz, who frequently represents clients on city planning issues, came before the body to express the support of one of his clients, the Working Waterfront Alliance, a group of businesses along Allens Avenue.

But Teitz also noted on a personal level that he felt that the council’s Ordinance Committee needs to take some action on the zone change, or get some hard guarantees, or else the DOT could go forward and sell the property while the city is still waiting for its own planning process to conclude.

“If [the] DOT goes out and puts this out for sale before the planning process is complete, we’re out of luck, you’re out of luck — we’re all out of luck,” he said.

Teitz recommended that the Ordinance Committee pass the ordinance, and transmit it to the full City Council for approval, but that the full council hold off acting on it as the city tries to see what it can work out with the DOT.

Committee Chairman Michael A. Solomon said that he expects that’s what will happen in the coming weeks.

Yurdin said that the council will seek a serious commitment from the DOT, with the ordinance hovering over the discussions as a bargaining chip.

“We’re not going on a handshake and a nod. We’re going to make sure the city is protected,” he said.

dbarbari@projo.com