Leave it to the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Madness to call the metamorphosis of 5 acres of open space into a 3-acre parking lot and miniaturized green space a win for a low-wealth neighborhood already baking in various shades of gray and black.

Pawtucket’s Morley Field, in the Woodlawn neighborhood, resides in the lowest-scoring city 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.

It’s no coincidence that the Woodlawn neighborhood, along the Providence border and the banks of the Moshassuck River, is 74% people of color, with 59% living at or below the poverty line.

A rare patch of neighborhood green is now set to be transformed into 130,680 square feet of black asphalt.

DEM spins a fairy tale to convince itself this neighborhood abuse is a good thing.

In a February letter to the National Park Service, DEM recommended that three Pawtucket parks — Morley Field, Dunnell Park, and the McCoy Stadium annex — be converted from public recreation space into impervious surfaces.

The letter offered a word salad to imply the three transformations from open space to concrete and asphalt are similar.

“The recreation equivalency of the replacement configuration, including the remaining and actively utilized portion of Dunnell, plus the remaining portion of South Woodlawn to be rehabilitated, as well as the proposed replacement known as Riverside, is considered to be equal to or greater than the original,” wrote the chief of DEM’s planning division and the state liaison officer for recreational spaces preserved under the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Dunnell Park, better known as Hank Soar Field, had 2.3 of its 14 federally protected acres converted into affordable housing and parking. The McCoy Stadium annex, once part of a minor-league baseball stadium complex, was bulldozed so the city could build a new high school.

The Morley Field transformation, meanwhile, is a land grab for an out-of-state developer. My colleague Rob Smith recently reported that the parking lot project is all but a done deal.

Morley Field, until it was fenced off four years ago and closed to the public, was still being used by residents and nearby workers for dog walking, exercise, and yoga, among other informal recreation. City officials cited soil tests showing lead and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons above acceptable levels as the reason the park was closed. Sure.

Morley Field opened in the 1970s, but it wasn’t until a New York-based developer sought to strip away the park’s federal protections that the city and state finally gave a damn about public health.

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.

One of the two lots that make up Morley Field, the 2-acre parcel, was donated to the city five decades ago to be used as an athletic field. The park’s namesake, William H. Morley, is long dead, so who cares about past promises.

The soil test that closed the park was commissioned by Blackstone Distribution Center LLC, which has signed a 20-year tax stabilization agreement with the city to develop a 165,000-square-foot distribution center on Moshassuck Street. It needs the green space at the bottom of the street, closest to the stressed river of the same name, for employee and truck parking.

The Moshassuck River is a mainstay on DEM’s list of impaired waters. Polluted runoff from the new parking lot will do little to improve the river’s chances of being removed from the list. This is what DEM considers environment management: trading green space for more stormwater runway that will further degrade the natural world and heat up the surrounding neighborhood.

DEM has long served more as a chamber of commerce than a state agency that claims to be the “chief steward of the state’s natural resources — from beautiful Narragansett Bay to our local waters and green spaces to the air we breathe.”

The polluted water of the abused Moshassuck River eventually drains into Narragansett Bay. More free parking means more driving, less public transit, and more pollution.

“We promote our natural resources — from our historic parks and beaches to our farms and delicious local food and seafood,” according to DEM’s About Us webpage. “We are focused on helping our state grow ‘green’ and build desirable neighborhoods that offer ample space to recreate and connect with nature.”

In reality, economic growth — even in the form of another drab, uninspiring parking lot — routinely refocuses DEM’s online mission.

The mayor, with backing from the state, was quick to give up this patch of green. After all, Donald Grebien doesn’t live in the Woodlawn neighborhood.

It’s difficult to believe the claim that Morley Field was shuttered because of past contamination and concern about public health. The city of Providence and the state, after all, built, in 2006, the Dr. Jorge Alvarez High School on the site of a contaminated brownfield that contained toxic solvents and groundwater contamination from a century of industrial activity. (Nearly 89% of the students are either Latino or Black.)

Sensing some may not buy the contamination story, DEM offered an alternative theory for taking away Woodlawn’s green space.

“The City reports that use of the (existing) 5.2-acre property had steadily declined, as determined by issuance of recreation (league play) permits, and only one program utilized the site annually, August to November, since 2015 (from summer 2015 until the 2022 closure of the site),” Megan DiPrete wrote in her recommendation to the National Park Service. “This reflects an intentional move by the City to modernize and expand league play opportunities at Max Read Field.”

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

“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 space taken away before an official decision about the parking lot was even reached, or a public meeting held.

“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,” DEM director Terry Gray told ecoRI News in February. “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.”

DEM’s never-ending excuses that it is powerless to do anything to protect the environment are tiresome.

The city’s search for a replacement property was required to begin in District 5, which includes the neighborhoods of Woodlawn and Oak Hill. About six months after Morley Field was closed to the public, Pawtucket’s planning director told the City Council in a September 2022 letter that no such substitute property could be found in those neighborhoods.

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 more open space — Riverside Cemetery and Max Read Field.

The result? Woodlawn will wind up with just a fraction of what sparse green space it once had.

City and state officials have spun the pocket park, about an acre in size, that will exist at the bottom of Moshassuck Street as some sort of green space utopia.

Described as “passive recreation,” Woodlawn’s remaining morsel of green is expected to include an open lawn, an event space with pollinator gardens, and a quarter-mile walking circuit around the perimeter of the downsized park.

There also will be parallel street parking available on Grenville Street, because the new 3-acre lot that will abut the park isn’t enough.

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