Grants fill out proposed Cullion deal

01:00 AM EST on Thursday, February 14, 2008
By David Scharfenberg Journal Staff Writer

Journal Staff Writer
CRANSTON — Mayor Michael T. Napolitano says he has secured the final financing piece the city needs to complete the $1.9-million buyout of the controversial, half-built Cullion Concrete Corp. batching plant off Pontiac Avenue.

Napolitano, in an interview yesterday, said he has won permission from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to transfer about $500,000 in unused grant money to the Cullion purchase.

And the city, he added, should be able to set aside $200,000 of the roughly $1 million in grant funding HUD has already allocated to Cranston for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

That $700,000, combined with state grants, state loans and local open-space bond funds already identified by city officials, should get the city to the $1.9-million figure, Napolitano said.

Cullion won a building permit for the project in March 2006, under the administration of former Mayor Stephen P. Laffey.

The plant has stirred strong opposition from neighbors concerned about the potential for traffic, noise and pollution should the project be completed.

And in December, Napolitano, a Democrat, negotiated a deal with Cullion to buy the property, 17.7 acres of company-owned land, for $1.9 million.

Cullion, in exchange, would remove the plant and cede its permits for the project.

Members of the City Council, which must sign off on the financing for the buyout, say they back the mayor’s push to get rid of the plant and create some sort of park and nature preserve on the land, along the Pawtuxet River. The council endorsed the broad outlines of the deal in a nonbinding 6-3 vote last month.

But several members have clung to concerns about the purchase price.

Now, with the money lined up — about half of it grant funds the taxpayers would not have to repay — the mayor said he hopes to win over council skeptics.

“There were concerns about the purchase price and they afforded us the opportunity to find the money and we found the money,” he said. “I think it makes [the deal] more palatable for people who had reservations.”

City Council President Aram G. Garabedian has been, perhaps, the most forceful critic of the $1.9-million buyout proposal, arguing that the city would pay too much for the land under the deal.

Yesterday, he said the mayor’s efforts to cobble together financing for the deal were “commendable.”

And he emphasized that he, too, wants to get rid of the concrete plant.

But Garabedian said he still has questions about the deal and would press for a better price for the taxpayers.

City Council member Jeffrey P. Barone agreed that the taxpayers would shoulder too much of the burden for the deal — even with the HUD grant money in place.

And the pill, he suggested, would be particularly hard to swallow for those who do not live near the half-built plant.

“The people in Western Cranston or on the eastern side of the city, they don’t care if there’s a cement plant in Garden City,” he said, referring to the area surrounding the plant.

But talk of final funding for the agreement did win kudos from John O. Mancini, a lawyer for Cullion.

“I think it’s encouraging news, both for the city and for Cullion,” he said.

Mancini, in the past, has emphasized that his client is eager for the city to pay off the deal quickly.

And he reiterated, yesterday, that the “clock is ticking” on the agreement.

But he seemed generally pleased with the city’s direction and declined to set a drop-dead date for the $1.9-million payment.

If the city backs out of the deal, Cullion could take the long-running fight over the project back to court.

bgedan@projo.com