PROVIDENCE — As the city explores the future of the city’s waterfront this week, a surprising player has emerged from obscurity to enter the discussions: the long-gone Cape Verdean population of Fox Point.

Fox Point was once the home of a large Cape Verdean population. Then Route 195 was built, and much of the community was uprooted as homes were destroyed to make way for the highway. Changes in the neighborhood’s demographic in the following decades brought wealthier residents and further broke up the old neighborhood.

Now, as the city holds a four-day charette to discuss the future of the Providence waterfront, members of the scattered Fox Point Cape Verdean community of the 1960s have joined to fight for the preservation of the India Point Park area as community space — specifically, the Shooters nightclub property, which borders India Point Park and is for sale.

“India Point is our space. If nothing else, let’s preserve it for public space,” said Claire Andrade-Watkins, an Emerson College professor who grew up in Fox Point.

“We got scattered after the atom bomb was dropped and [Route] 195 was put in,” she said.

But, she said, “We haven’t gone away. We’ve just been a little preoccupied the last 40 years.” Andrade-Watkins is the creator of the 2006 film Some Kind of Funny Porto Rican? A Cape Verdean American Story, about the Fox Point Cape Verdean community.

Though some of the momentum has spread via word of mouth among Andrade-Watkins and her friends, the effort has an official element as well, through the work of the Cape Verdean Subcommittee of the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission.

João Goncalves, president of the subcommittee, put out a call to the media and in area Cape Verdean churches, urging Cape Verdeans to come to the sessions. The goal, he said, is to have a space for Cape Verdeans to gather for the annual Cape Verdean Independence Day celebration, which is now held at Roger Williams Park.

“The Cape Verdean community in Fox Point is gone, but we have not forgotten them. It is our hope to have the festival return to India Point Park. It is part of our Cape Verdean legacy and part of … Rhode Island’s rich and diverse history,” Goncalves said.

With that in mind, they have teamed up with the activists of Friends of India Point Park and Head of the Bay Gateway, two groups fighting to see the nearly 2-acre Shooters property preserved as a public or destination use.

The groups are pressing the city and state to ensure that Shooters be turned into a public destination and community resource — a marina, a waterfront restaurant, a public boating dock — just not private, high-rise residential development.

The state owns the parcel, which it purchased for use in the Route 195 relocation project. The Department of Transportation, which will determine how best to sell the property, intends to make up some of its costs on the highway relocation through sale of the land. It has not committed to any restrictions on the sale.

Arria Bilodeau, one of the directors of Head of the Bay Gateway, said this is a historic opportunity to recapture the Providence of old — the same active waterfront that the old Cape Verdean community once enjoyed.

“The city lost its identity as a seaport city and a waterfront attraction. We now have an opportunity to recreate that,” she said.

“Tourism articles simply don’t refer to Narragansett Bay today as one of Providence’s assets,” Bilodeau said.

For Andrade-Watkins, this nascent effort has allowed her to reconnect with people from her old neighborhood that she has not heard from in decades. Several members of the old community came out to yesterday’s charette.

The charettes, Andrade-Watkins said, reminded her of similar planning sessions held when she was a little girl, when plans to build Route 195 were bandied about.

“Our parents fought and lost … now the children are coming back, with a bigger world view and with a little more savvy,” she said.

The charette continues today with a session at 9 a.m. on short sea shipping and one at 2 p.m. on possible new sources of city revenue from the waterfront. At 6 p.m., participants will examine four possible scenarios for the waterfront and establish the pros and cons of each. All sessions are held at Johnson & Wales Harborside Campus, at 265 Harborside Ave.

The charette concludes Thursday night with a session at 6 p.m.

dbarbari@projo.com