Portsmouth Zoning Board Denies Bid to Cut Private Road Through Prudence Island Forest

The Portsmouth Zoning Board of Review voted at its Thursday, July 23 meeting to deny a dimensional variance that would have let a property owner build roughly 500 feet of new roadway through undeveloped forest on Prudence Island, ending months of dispute over drainage, tree removal and the legal status of a paper street laid out in 1929.

Prudence Island road variance denied

The application involved a landlocked lot off Bayview Avenue on Prudence Island. Because the lot does not front a public street, the owner needed a variance to build a house there — but doing so required constructing a private road through what several neighbors described as virgin forest with mature, decades-old trees. The case had already been continued once, in April, with the board asking the applicant to bring back civil engineering drawings addressing road construction and drainage.

At Thursday's hearing, an attorney representing the applicant presented a maintenance covenant, drainage "swale" designs, and a letter from town public works staff indicating support for the drainage approach, which mirrors work recently done on Narragansett Avenue. But board members said they still had not been shown an actual, professionally engineered road plan. When pressed, the applicant confirmed that no licensed engineer had prepared the road drawings; an engineering firm the applicant had originally hired had stepped back from the project after what the applicant described as a hostile encounter with a neighbor on site.

Several Prudence Island residents who identified themselves as abutters testified against the project, raising concerns about wetlands, mosquito-breeding standing water, existing flooding problems on Narragansett Avenue, and whether a single property owner could unilaterally create a road-maintenance agreement affecting a right-of-way that multiple neighbors may hold interest in. One resident argued the project would fundamentally change the character of a 400-plus-foot stretch of undeveloped land and urged denial. A letter from another Prudence Island property owner, read into the record, described a decade of drainage problems near the site and asked that any new road plan be reviewed by qualified professionals before approval.

The applicant's attorney asked the board for a continuance to gather additional engineering documentation, and later asked to withdraw the application rather than face a denial. Board members noted that the applicant had been told what information was required and had chosen what to submit instead. After discussion, the board declined to amend the pending motion and voted to deny the variance, closing this round of review. The applicant could reapply in the future, though board members and a resident who spoke against the project both suggested the road issue may ultimately need to be resolved through a private agreement among abutters, a planning board process, or the courts rather than by the zoning board alone.

Other decisions

In other business, the board:

• Approved, by voice vote, a dimensional variance for an East Main Road homeowner to build an open-sided lean-to onto a pre-existing garage for covered storage, on the condition that the structure remain unenclosed with no walls, doors or windows.
• Approved, by voice vote, a variance for a side-yard setback reduction at 82 Aquidneck Avenue so William A. Richards can build a one-stall, ADA-accessible garage. Richards testified that his home was made fully wheelchair-accessible for his late wife and that the garage would allow space for an accessible van and a wheelchair-friendly path to the backyard.
• Approved, by voice vote, a minor front-setback variance for a Prudence Island homeowner seeking to widen a narrow deck from 6 feet to 9 feet.
• Approved, by voice vote, setback variances for a Cliff Avenue addition and deck expansion, after the applicants' representative argued the lot's unusual narrow shape — reduced further when the state took land for the Sakonnet/Cove Bridge decades ago — leaves almost no buildable area without relief.
• Approved, by voice vote, a reduced side-yard variance and a shed relocation for a Prudence Island "Brown Lane" property, where the homeowners are replacing an aging septic system and rebuilding a cottage with a smaller footprint than a variance approved four years earlier.
• Continued to the board's August 20, 2026 meeting an application to expand a Narragansett Avenue garage and add an accessory dwelling unit above it, after board members and an abutter raised questions about whether the project complies with 2024 state ADU law and suggested the applicant could shift the structure roughly two feet to avoid needing a variance at all.
• Continued to August 20 an application involving a landlocked lot on Glen Terrace after no representative appeared for the applicant.

What's next

The zoning board's next scheduled hearing is Thursday, August 20, 2026, when it is expected to take up the continued Narragansett Avenue and Glen Terrace applications. Residents can follow those and future agendas through the town's published zoning board meeting materials.