I went back to Ohio
But my pretty countryside
Had been paved down the middle
By a government that had no pride

— “My City Was Gone,” The Pretenders

PAWTUCKET, R.I. — It appears the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management has given up the fight to save an oasis of neglected green space in a neighborhood neither the city nor the state cares about. Of course, the state’s fight for the environmental justice community was akin to Mr. Burns flailing weakly at Homer.

About five years ago, city officials introduced the idea of selling William H. Morley Memorial Field for half a million dollars, so the only green space in the heavily paved and concrete-covered Woodlawn neighborhood could be turned into a parking lot for a distribution center being redeveloped nearby.

Morley Field, in District 5, resides in the lowest-scoring Pawtucket neighborhood when it comes to tree cover and green space. In fact, this marginalized neighborhood has one of the lowest scores in all of Rhode Island.

City Council member Clovis Gregor, local residents, park advocates, and the Conservation Law Foundation have been fighting the Moshassuck Street parking project since the beginning. Significantly more people are against the paving over of a public park, than support the annihilation of more Rhode Island green space. The only people in favor appear to be shortsighted elected officials who don’t live in the neighborhood.

The city’s alleged justification for converting Morley Field into a parking lot stems largely from its failure to maintain the park, according to the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF). In a July 2024 letter to the National Park Service, CLF senior attorney Richard Stang wrote:

“According to the City, declining use of Morley Field over the last 30 years is the main reason for the proposed conversion. The City claims the last permit for Morley Field was issued in 2021 to a youth football team, most likely the Oakwood Raiders, but the team subsequently moved to Max Read Field, a newly developed City recreation facility. However, not only are these statements presented to bolster the City’s argument for its proposed conversion, they are also specifically designed to be misleading. While the Oakwood Raiders youth football league did move to Max Read Field, it was because the City told them they must.”

In spring 2022, shortly after the city reportedly told the Oakwood Raiders to move, Morley Field was closed and a chain-link fence erected to keep the public out. The park has been locked away since. The space taken away before an official decision was even reached, or a public meeting held.

In a November 2024 letter to the National Park Service, Stang outlined how the city has repeatedly ignored environmental justice issues when it comes to its desire to pave over much of the park’s 5 acres.

The Woodlawn neighborhood, along the Providence line and the banks of the Moshassuck River, is 74% people of color, with 59% living at or below the poverty line. Nearly 30% of the neighborhood’s population is children.

Opponents have called the attempted theft of the neighborhood park environmental racism and callous urban development that steals green space from low-wealth families.

The city and developer have reportedly reached a 20-year tax stabilization agreement. The fact we value parking lots over parks is disturbing. The fact Pawtucket officials deliberately neglected Morley Field is enraging.

Morley Field, 94 Moshassuck St., is a public recreation facility that was created in the 1970s. Woodlawn residents and park advocates have claimed and testified that the city’s intentional neglect of Morley Field led to its declining use.

While Morley Field was left to fade away, recreational space in the Fairlawn neighborhood has been upgraded, and across the Seekonk River on the other side of the city is well-maintained Slater Memorial Park along the banks of Ten Mile River.

DEM claims its environmental justice policy seeks to prevent disproportionate negative impacts on residents of lower-income neighborhoods that have fewer parks and trees. The agency acknowledges many of Rhode Island’s environmental justice communities are afflicted by pollution from numerous industrial, commercial, and governmental facilities.

“Additionally, these same communities often lack opportunities to access the state’s open spaces to recreate and enjoy nature,” according to DEM.

These carefully crafted words are routinely ignored when it comes time to put them into action. The webpage has little real-world impact. It’s part of Rhode Island’s larger neglect of the voiceless.

The city acquired the Morley Field property consisting of two parcels through a National Park Service grant (3 acres) and as a gift (2 acres). It used to host baseball and football games and soccer matches. Behind the keep-the-public-out fence are lights and restrooms that have been left to rot.

One of the two lots that make up Morley Field, the 2-acre parcel identified as Plat 62A/Lot 291, was donated to the city five decades ago to be used as an athletic field.

Since the 3-acre parcel, identified as Plat 62A/Lot 309, was bought by the city with money from a National Park Service (NPS) grant, the city is required to replace the green space. The replacement property has to be approved by the federal government.

The city’s search for a replacement property was required to begin in District 5. Pawtucket’s planning director told the City Council in a September 2022 letter that no such substitute property could be found in the neighborhoods of Woodlawn or Oak Hill. The city did find a parcel in a more affluent, whiter neighborhood about a mile from Morley Field. The 9.2 acres of undeveloped land on the city’s south side sits between Riverside Cemetery and Max Read Field.

Gregor has called the plan to create more recreational room and open space between an athletic complex and a cemetery “redundant and absurd.” He noted Woodlawn could wind up with no access to any in-district green space — or at best a fraction of what is now fenced off. A slice of the 5 acres, surrounded by more pavement and parked trucks and cars, would remain green space.

“Unfortunately, a small group of politically motivated residents and non-residents has chosen Morley Field to express their opposition and advance personal agendas,” Mayor Donald Grebien told The Valley Breeze last fall.

What a pathetic response to an environmental justice issue for an asphalt-covered neighborhood. The mayor lives near Slater Memorial Park, about 4 miles away from Morley Field. There are plenty of trees in his neighborhood.

“I will not be satisfied until we find a resolution that benefits the entire community, and we will continue to explore all available possibilities,” Grebien added. “We are looking at all opportunities throughout the city, especially in the immediate area of Woodlawn. The city is purchasing 9.2 acres next to the Max Read Complex from Riverside Cemetery, plus leasing another acre in the Woodlawn section near the Morley Complex. It’s a net gain of green/open space of 6.2 acres.”

It’s a net gain of 9.2 acres for an area of the city that already enjoys athletic fields and green space, but a loss of nearly 4 acres for the Woodlawn neighborhood.

While Grebien looks “at all opportunities throughout the city” to find green space for the Woodlawn neighborhood, the city is on the verge of allowing Morley Field to be executed.

Greg Gerritt, founder of Friends of the Moshassuck, recently emailed DEM director Terry Gray for an update on the Morley Field matter. Gray, to his credit, promptly responded.

“Over the past few months, the City of Pawtucket through their environmental consultant Terracon has been working to complete the application for conversion of the three recreation properties, including a portion of Morley Field, to comply with the requirements of the National Park Service for such conversions,” Gray wrote in his Feb. 13 email. “In many ways this is analogous to a permit application submitted to the Department. With each discussion and iteration, our team has carefully compared the City’s proposals to those NPS requirements. Last week, our team notified me that their final submission was compliant with NPS guidance. We then submitted the package with our determination to the NPS for their review and decision on Monday, which is our role in this review process.”

Gray noted the final decision now rests with the federal agency.

Gerritt, a Providence resident and social justice advocate, appreciated the director’s response but is disappointed by DEM’s response.

“Several years ago RIDEM put out an environmental justice statement that was supposed to guide the work of the department,” Gerritt wrote back to Gray. “But here we have the first time when that statement was put to the test. And the department flunked. Clearly when push came to shove the commitment to environmental justice went by the boards. The excuse that the federal government does not include that in their criteria is just that, an excuse, as the Feds put together their rules before anyone had ever used the words environmental justice in public.”

Gray told ecoRI News the city’s request for a Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) conversation of the Morley Field property has been ongoing for a few years, and throughout that process there have been several public meetings and other public engagement opportunities.

“Ultimately, it was up to the city to decide whether it would propose the conversion of Morley Field and how they would replace that recreational asset in their community,” Gray wrote. “Our responsibility was to ensure that the city complied with federal requirements for conversion of recreational properties that had been funded with federal LWCF funds. After several resubmissions and amendments, we believe the city has met these requirements.”

At a regularly scheduled September meeting of the Planning Commission, the agenda featured a vote on a request from out-of-state JK Equities LLC for an extension on project approval. The New York-based developer is the entity seeking to turn Morley Field into a parking lot for its planned Blackstone Distribution Center. The Planning Commission had already tabled JK Equities’ extension request at its August meeting.

While no one from JK Equities could be bothered to show up to the September meeting, dozens of Morley Field advocates attended to lodge their opposition and ask the commission to deny JK Equities’ request.

The Planning Commission voted, 5-2, to table the extension request and then declined to take public comment on the agenda item. The commission claimed it wasn’t the body’s practice for an agenda item to be considered without a representative of the applicant present. It’s OK, though, to waste the public’s time.

“You seem more concerned with protecting the outside developer than you are with the residents of Pawtucket,” Gregor said. “Your own planning commission agendas require you to take public comment regardless of whether or not the applicant is here.”

That stipulation only applies when a neighborhood is affluent and mostly white.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.