NARRAGANSETT — The view from the quad at the University of Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay Campus is gorgeous and tranquil.
The October sun sparkles off the water of the West Passage, illuminating the orange leaves of Jamestown and the Pell Bridge behind it. Even on a mid-semester Wednesday afternoon, there are plenty of empty benches, just a few students lying on the grass reading and it’s quiet enough to hear construction workers building a new pier off in the distance.
Maybe it’s too quiet.
Tucked away at the end of South Ferry Road between an Environmental Protection Agency installation and the Bonnet Shores beach enclave, the Bay Campus can feel like a forgotten corner of the state university system.
There are no dorms, no fraternity houses, and the graduate students who study there sometimes forget to come out of the lab.
But URI and state leaders see the Bay Campus as a key part of their plan to grow the state’s “blue economy” of water-related businesses.
So if voters approve a $100-million bond referendum in the November election, the Bay Campus will get a little bit louder and busier.
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Question 1
The URI Bay Campus referendum – Question 1 – is one of three statewide ballot questions in this year’s election that combined ask for permission to borrow $400 million.
Question 2 asks to put another $250-million installation into the state fund that pays for school construction.
And Question 3 would borrow $50 million for a host of environmental and recreational projects from brownfield remediation to improvements at the Roger Williams Park Zoo. It is known as the “Green Bond.”
What would $100M build for URI?
Not as much as it would have a year or two ago.
Rising construction costs forced URI to cut one of the new buildings it had wanted – a marine geological lab – from the slate of bond-funded projects.
Now the $100 million would pay for three new buildings and a security gatehouse at the entrance to the campus.
The biggest project on the list is replacement of the 1968 Horn Laboratory with a new 100,000-square-foot “Ocean Frontiers Building.”
Walking through the lab, there is no sign much has been spruced up since 1968. There is no climate control in the research spaces and the elevator is out of service.
But important work is being done. In one room, water sloshes in a dark blue recycling-the bin-size container perched on an agitator. Researchers are testing for PFAS, known as “forever chemicals,” in the water.
Paula Bontempi, dean of URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography, said the condition of the lab makes it difficult to attract talent.
“The vintage of the rusted cabinets and the windows that don’t even close makes it really depressing,” she said. “I’m trying to recruit faculty with MIT and their facilities and this is what I have to offer.”
The other academic buildings that the $100-million bond would pay for would create a new Ocean Engineering complex.
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They replace two corrugated metal structures. One holds a wave tank, but a leaky roof means the water level changes when it rains.
In addition to keeping the rain out, the new building will have enough space to double the size of the wave tank to 200 feet long.
The tank can test how different vessels and structures stand up to waves of different shapes and sizes, something Bontempi said is of growing interest to offshore wind businesses testing out equipment and the insurance industry looking to figure out how vulnerable a location might be when sea levels rise.
Of course, this isn’t the first time in recent history URI has asked voters to approve borrowing for new buildings, or even borrowing for new buildings on the Bay Campus.
Since 2014, voters have approved a bond for URI every two years for a total of $283 million. They were:
2014: $125 million for a new College of Engineering building
2016: $45 million for additional construction at the College of Engineering
2018: $45 million (out of a $70-million bond) for construction at the Bay Campus
2021: $57 million to build a new fine arts center
So where did the last $45 million go?
It is being used to pay for “Phase 1” of the Bay Campus revamp, which includes the new pier under construction to host the National Science Foundation’s Narragansett Dawn research ship. The new ship, when it arrives, will be too big for the old pier.
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URI is also planning to build a new ocean robotics lab next to the decrepit Horn laboratory, where researchers can test deep sea submersibles, underwater drones, robots and the software to operate them.
Flyers promoting Question 1 are scattered throughout conference rooms and offices at the Ocean Science Exploration Center, the central building on the Bay Campus that opened in the 1990s.
These materials come from a 501(c)4 called Rhode Islanders for Higher Education set up to promote the referendum. The group’s treasurer is Nancy Gillespie, who works in URI’s marketing and communications department. It hasn’t reported any spending with the Board of Elections yet.
“We have world-class research going on out there. We’re attracting students from around the world. But we’ve allowed the campus to deteriorate over the last 60 years,” URI President Marc Parlange said about why voters should put $100 million into the Bay Campus. “These buildings are leaking. We are trying to do world-class research with companies from Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Canada. We have very strong international collaborations in Australia and Africa. It’s very difficult when you are working in buildings that don’ t provide a safe environment to do the work.”
He said URI gets $55 million per year in federal research dollars and for every dollar of state investment we get $6.25 back.
Will it change the look and feel of the campus, which is almost pastoral if you ignore the large concrete rectangle housing the nuclear reactor used for research?
“We will take two of our most atrocious buildings and replace them with modern buildings. There will be more people walking on the pathways. You will see more collaboration with the state of Rhode Island, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency,” he said.
question 2
In 2018, voters approved a $250-million school construction bond with the idea of another $250 million would be requested down the line.
The $250 million from the last bond has all been awarded, but not all spent, according to state Department of Education spokesman Victor Morente.
Forty-three school districts and charter schools were awarded money from the bond.
Providence got the most, $64.5 million, Pawtucket $46.1 million and Warwick $22 million. Among charters, Achievement First got the most with $4.7 million.
Morente said the state will only have a breakdown of how much went into each school project once all the money is spent.
Separate from Question 2, there is $1.3 billion in school borrowing up for approval on local ballots including funds for new high schools in Warwick, Pawtucket and Middletown; a new middle school in East Providence and new elementary schools in North Providence, Westerly, and Middletown.
Question 3
As always, the “green bond” would fund a laundry list of different projects. In particular this time:
• $21 million for the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank; $16 million for communities to restore or protect vulnerable coastal areas and floodplains; $5 million for small business energy loans.
• $12 million for Roger Williams Park Zoo to build a carbon-neutral education center and event pavilion. “This project will help the Zoo meet technology demands for modern-day classrooms, increase student capacity, expand its education programs for RI schools, and establish a large venue with seating capacity for lectures, assemblies, and artistic performances,” according to a news release from the Department of Environmental Management.
• $5 million for communities to buy open space
• $3 million for Narragansett Bay watershed restoration
• $3 million for forest restoration
• $4 million to clean up toxic industrial sites or “brownfields.”
• $2 million in matching grants to improve local parks
“Funding supplied by voter-approved green bonds is a catalyst that gives DEM the capability to do much of what we do to manage, protect, and restore Rhode Island’s natural resources,” DEM Director Terry Gray said in the news release.
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