WARWICK, R.I. — The abutters and neighbors of a controversial industrial parcel on the outskirts of Pawtuxet Village notched a win last week when the Zoning Board of Appeals, after a three-and-half-hour meeting, ruled in their favor that subcontractors at 175 Post Road had exceeded the allowed uses of the property, which is zoned only for light industrial.

The unanimous vote by the board overruled a previous determination by city building official Albert DeCorte, who earlier this year ruled that the industrial activity happening at 175 Post Road was allowable within the city’s zoning ordinances.

North American Crane & Rigging LLC, an industrial rigging and crane service company based in Providence, has been renting the property since 2024, and had sublet use of the parcel to at least two other companies in the building trades.

The zoning of the property, despite its location adjacent to historic homes and close to Pawtuxet Village, allows certain industrial uses by right. But abutters Vanessa Carlton and John McCauley, a married couple who have lived at the William Rhodes House, next door to the parcel, since 2021 and who brought the appeal to the zoning board, complained that the owners of the property and their tenants have exceeded the allowable uses of the parcel.

Carlton described different noises coming from 175 Post Road, ranging from repeated banging noises to the sounds of idling trucks and cranes. Both Carlton and McCauley played videos documenting the sounds, which they said happened typically between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m., with some notable exceptions occurring even earlier in the morning.

“We were trying everything to block out the noise,” Carlton told the board, describing one video with music playing in the background.

The company, said Carlton and McCauley, had installed insufficient vegetation and other buffer measures to block out the industrial noises coming from the site.

Gina Preziosi, a resident who lives across the street from the property at Village Green, showed the zoning board a video taken May 4 at 4:30 a.m. showing police cars, idling trucks, and loud industrial noises coming from the direction of Venturi Avenue, the street by which trucks access 175 Post Road.

“I am literally sitting in my bed when I recorded this video,” Preziosi said. “I can see it from my bedroom.”

The noise nuisance problems started in July 2024, according to Carlton. At the time, according to court documents from a lawsuit filed by Carlton and McCauley, the property was subleased to the JOGO Corp., a company that manufactured floor trusses on-site and used large cranes and other equipment.

North American Crane & Rigging took over the site again in October 2024, using the cranes on-site to move generators and other large items onto trucks for transport. Superior Court Judge Daniel Procaccini granted Carlton and McCauley a preliminary injunction and restraining order against the owners of 175 Post Road as well as North American Crane & Rigging last December.

The order mandated no work that exceeded 60 decibels — the limit of Warwick’s noise ordinance — be performed on-site, and prohibited the defendants from harassing or photographing Carlton and McCauley.

“Plenty of other hellish things have taken place since then,” McCauley said.

Peter Skwirz, a city solicitor who defended both the city and DeCorte in front of the board at the Nov. 24 meeting, said the activity at 175 Post Road wasn’t prohibited in the zoning ordinance and the zoning board’s reversal of DeCorte’s decision could set a dangerous precedent.

“I’m not saying I’m unsympathetic to the issue neighbors are facing … but I do think the board needs to be cautious when using the power of government to coerce a private property owner,” Skwirz told the Zoning Board of Appeals. “It’s not enough to say it’s too big, it’s too loud, it’s too annoying. You need to be able to point to a specific provision of the zoning ordinance and say you were wrong.”

In his defense of DeCorte’s determination, Skwirz said there was nothing in the city’s zoning ordinance prohibiting such activity, and that everything outlined by the defendants was allowed under the code.

Hagop Jawharjian, an attorney representing Artak Avagyan and Lee Beausoleil, the owners of 175 Post Road, warned the board that reversing the decision of the building official might amount to an illegal taking by city government.

It’s not the first time the industrial-zoned property at 175 Post Road has been before a city board in recent years. Avagyan and Beausoleil went before the Planning Board in early 2023 and received preliminary approval to build two storage units for contractors, totaling 65,000 square feet.

The proposal was opposed by residents and local groups such as Pawtuxet Green Revival, which expressed environmental concerns about what contaminants lay buried on the property, as well as future access to a series of trails running parallel to the river popular with Pawtuxet Village residents. The 2.3-mile trail loop ultimately cuts through the private property at 175 Post Road, and in the past had been maintained by a local Boy Scout troop and local volunteers, despite having no pre-existing easement.

But in some ways the preliminary approval for the storage units was a poison pill; in attempting to reach a compromise between both sides, the zoning board included a recommendation from the Planning Department to include an easement for the river trails, which turned out to be a nonstarter for Avagyan and Beausoleil, who were opposed to any easement on the property. By May 2023, the two had pulled their application for storage facilities, choosing instead to sublet the land to other contractors.