The East Providence City Council will hold a public hearing Tuesday, August 11, at 6:30 p.m. at City Hall to formally strike the word "hotel" from the zoning rules governing the former Metacomet Country Club site, according to a public notice published by the city's Planning Department on July 15.
The change closes a five-year-old gap between what the council actually voted to do and what ended up written into city law. On July 20, 2021, the council voted 3-2 to place the 138-acre bayside property under the city's Waterfront Special Development District, clearing the way for developer Marshall Properties LLC to build a large mixed-use project. As part of that vote, the council adopted an amendment introduced by then-Ward 3 Councilor Nate Cahoon barring hotels from the site. But when the ordinance was later codified into Chapter 19 of the city's zoning code, the list of permitted uses for the Metacomet subdistrict still included "hotel" alongside commercial office, retail, continuing care, fast food and conference center uses. A subdistrict is simply a zoning area with its own tailored set of rules within a larger district, and in this case the written rules never matched the council's spoken vote.
The proposed amendment would revise Section 19-480(d)(8) of the city code to remove "hotel" from that list, aligning the written ordinance with the 2021 vote. City officials describe the change as clarifying an existing prohibition rather than creating a new one.
The discrepancy dates back to a contentious stretch for the property. PGA Tour golfer Brad Faxon's investment group bought the historic Donald Ross-designed golf club in 2019, then sold it to Marshall Properties within months, touching off organized opposition from residents. A group called Keep Metacomet Green formed in July 2020 and grew to several thousand members, pushing the city to block large-scale development and preserve the site as open space. Facing that pressure, Marshall Properties told the city in August 2020 that it was dropping the hotel component of its proposal, according to reporting by GoLocalProv on the 2021 vote. The council's hotel ban a year later was widely seen as a win for the group, reported at the time by EastBayRI, which also detailed the 3-2 breakdown: Cahoon, Rodericks and Britto in favor, with Mourato and Sousa opposed.
Because the ban never made it cleanly into the codified text, a hotel technically remained a legal use on the property under the letter of the ordinance, even though the developer had already abandoned that plan. It is not yet clear whether Marshall Properties will raise any objection to formally losing that zoning right at the August 11 hearing, or treat it as routine.
The same hearing will also take up a separate zoning petition, filed by attorney Dylan Conley on behalf of Jacavone Investment Corp. and Elevator Properties Inc., to allow "attached single family dwellings" in residential and commercial districts citywide — a change tied to recent state housing law changes aimed at easing Rhode Island's housing shortage.
Marshall Properties' broader plan for the site, known as "The Met," has continued to advance since receiving preliminary subdivision approval from the Planning Board in June 2022, moving through required archaeological, traffic and noise studies ordered by the Waterfront Commission. In March, the council voted 4-1 to replace the Waterfront District's previous requirement that 25% of units in a development be affordable with a citywide standard of 15%, rising to 20% for developers using tax-increment financing.
The August 11 hearing is open to public comment. Residents can review the full text of the proposed amendment through the Planning Department's public notice posted on the city's website ahead of the meeting.