One of the issues that the Comprehensive Plan for the Providence waterfront hopes to address is that of underused land like this nearly vacant lot on Allens Avenue where Verizon parks its trucks.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

PROVIDENCE — Whether they’re artists, shipyarders, developers, city planners, preservationists or East Side homeowners, the groups fighting over the city’s industrial waterfront come from one of two schools of thought: those who believe that the waterfront can have it all, and those who think that a “mixed” waterfront really means that someone has to go.

In that climate, every routine status update soon becomes a potential battleground.

The city is weighing changing the zoning along the upper stretch of Allens Avenue to allow the possibility of offices, residences or hotels among the large but scattered industrial businesses along that strip.

Developer Patrick T. Conley is already housing artist’s studios in his Allens Avenue mill, and he wants to bring more new non-industrial development to what he calls the “wilting waterfront.”

The industrial business owners, led by Promet Shipyard and Sprague Energy and calling themselves the Working Waterfront Alliance, insist that any residences or hotels would mean their eventual demise — but they are now grudgingly accepting that some office development might be tolerable.

The debate has entered a new phase, where the parties have made their main points, and are now waiting for the city’s Planning Department to release its findings on the future of the waterfront. That announcement is still at least six months away, but it hasn’t stopped the players from trying to press their case to one another — and to the media.

In anticipation of last night’s status update, City Planning Director Thomas E. Deller led media on a tour of ProvPort, the city’s main port area, yesterday to show that the city has a large, viable and well-defined port area beyond the upper Allens Avenue corridor.

“You can mix uses with the right buffers and the right controls. … There’s no intention on the city’s part to push out the businesses,” Deller said, adding that the city is simply trying to grow the tax base and create jobs in any way it can.

The day before, The Working Waterfront had released its own study and pitched its own vision of what the zone changes on the waterfront should look like.

Missives also went out from the artists at the mill, from a largely East Side group seeking to protect India Point Park, and from the social activism agency Direct Action for Rights and Equality, all urging members to attend and speak out.

Many did. Last night, before 100 people, the city’s consultant, Ninigret Partners, fleshed out its vision of the options the city can pursue from here.

The firm’s president, Kevin Hively, laid out four possibilities for the future: the continuation of the status quo of existing industrial business; the introduction of office and commercial buildings; the introduction of residences; and the dramatic expansion of maritime-related business.

From analyzing other cities, Hively said, he found that mixing uses has been a popular option, but was most effective when the city placed some restrictions on how the uses are blended, and adds buffers between uses.

For instance, highly specific, “tiered” zoning gradations, such as those used in Boston, can be effective, as can extremely high standards of review for incoming businesses, or residential uses with restrictive conditions attached.

Hively’s job was not to say what was the best approach, but to lay out options for Providence to pursue.

“What I think makes the most sense is to allow for as much flexibility as is possible,” while recognizing that there are some businesses that require special protection, Hively said.

The Working Waterfront, however, has already settled on its preferred plan. Saying that its own study has shown that the mixing techniques damage industry in the long-term, the group is proposing its own set of zoning changes intent on protecting the industrial businesses and barring residences. But they are giving some ground — their plan includes an acknowledgement for the first time that some office uses might be acceptable along the waterfront.

The Working Waterfront commissioned its own study, by Nathan Kelly of Providence’s Horsley Witten Group, that analyzes many of the same ports the Ninigret study examined, with often divergent conclusions.

Boston, Portland and Baltimore, for instance, were all present in the Ninigret report, with examples of why some measures worked, and why some do not. In the Horsley report, they are raised as examples of why mixed-use that includes residential hurts industry in the long run.

“If you want your hard, heavy industry to remain viable, you need to preclude certain types of development, particularly residential and hotel,” Kelly said.

Working Waterfront proposes two specific zone changes.

First, it proposes extending the jobs-only district, which bans residential and hotel uses in the ProvPort area, north to include all of the Allens Avenue industrial area.

Second, it wants to create a new zoning designation, called Waterfront Mixed Use/Industrial, that would be applied to the upper Allens Avenue area. It would prohibit residential and hotel uses, but allow for some types of office and commercial uses: primarily those that are industrially related.

It would also like to create an Industrial/Manufacturing Overlay District that could be applied to areas across the city.

The Alliance plans to submit these changes to the City Plan Commission for consideration.

To city resident and zone-change opponent Judith Reilly, last night’s presentation was a story she had heard before. “I feel like we’re going to be brought back over and over again until we say we want mixed-use. But there have been some very strong opinions voiced against mixed-use. I’m not sure why we have to keep going over it again and again,” to applause from much of the audience.

The debate is likely to continue for years. It should be January or February before the city’s planners release their initial draft, Deller said. Discussion will follow that, and the final zoning changes for the Comprehensive Plan might not be enacted until 2011.

However it turns out, this debate has already cost the city business, said commercial real estate agent Frank Jacques, who has been trying to market the 12-acre lot at 434 Allens Ave.

He said that in the last year, he had two businesses lined up — “written offers, with deposits” — looking to use the property, before they both pulled out.

The zoning debate is what made them run, he said.

“The comments we received, unsolicited, is that they didn’t want to get embroiled in the debate we’re having right now — rezoning.”

Deller said that’s only partly true. He said in the last five years, only three businesses have come to the city legitimately wanting to settle on Allens Avenue, and two were in Provport. The third, he said, pulled out because of the state permitting process, not because of concerns over the zoning fight.

Hively said that one thing is certain: the uncertainty over the waterfront makes development of any type there difficult. The sooner the city can settle on one approach, the better for all involved.

“Whatever decision is made, there has to be a decision made,” Hively said.

“The status quo, of uncertainty, is nobody’s friend.”

dbarbari@projo.com