'Smart' Dowling Village now planned

It's one of several new planned changes as deadline looms

By ETHAN SHOREY, Valley Breeze Staff Writer

NORTH SMITHFIELD - With final exam time just three weeks away, the Dowling Village plan just got a whole lot "smarter."

Under a plan heard by town officials last Thursday, June 25, developer Brian Bucci has agreed to transform Dowling Village into a "smart village," an upgrade he hopes will further silence the critics and grant a new level of convenience to shoppers.

That and numerous other concessions have been agreed to by Bucci as he seeks the Planning Board's preliminary plan approval by a fast-approaching July 24 deadline.

Attorney John Mancini described for the Planning Board a mixed-use retail, office, and residential development that will now include an expensive, state-of-the-art traffic monitoring system and on-site weather station.

A Web site may also be created so shoppers could both check the weather and pending traffic levels when considering their next shopping trip.

The spreading "smart village" phenomenon across the world combines sophisticated, state-of-the-art infrastructure with up-to-date facility management, according to the Smart Village Company model now being used by many developers. According to Mancini, a new list of improvements and modifications detailed last week came about largely due to Town Planner Robert Ericson's influence.

"These (practices) are just breaking in the management of facilities," said Ericson, who told The Breeze that both the traffic and weather monitoring systems would go a long way in evaluating Dowling Village's impact on the community when construction is complete.

The new traffic monitoring system at Dowling Village would be installed once main roadways are fully operational and would stay in use for one full year, according to Mancini. Residents and officials would be able to gauge which intersections are especially affected and may need to be altered, and could also watch live camera views of traffic from the comfort of home if Bucci agrees to install Web cams.

Caroly Shumway, president of the opposition group Valley Alliance for Smart Growth, said that while the traffic site will be "a cool gadget," she wonders what recourse residents will have when their traffic is nearly doubled.

"At this point, none to date, the applicant has made no modification on traffic concerns," she said.

The proposed weather station would monitor the temperature of the environmentally-sensitive - and highly controversial - Booth Pond, allowing concerned parties to monitor what effect the weather has on a changed landscape.

The weather station would be able to monitor whether the proposed drainage system at Dowling Village can handle anything from an inch of rain to a "100-year-storm."

"You get not just the rainfall in that area but the distribution of rainfall as well," said Ericson.

Mancini told Planning Board members that Bucci has agreed to incorporate a new planting scheme at Dowling Village, mixing in not only indigenous plants but several new species, "making it more of a garden than a cookie cutter," he said.

Mancini told board members his client could also concede some of the square footage currently planned as part of "Retail 5," or what town officials believe will be a Lowe's store near Booth Pond.

There "is a likelihood" that Retail 5 could be reduced, said Mancini, meaning a potentially wider buffer than the current just over 100 feet between the store and Booth Pond, but the plan as it now stands is to keep the planned building at 152,000 square feet, down already from 171,000 square feet.

Bucci engineer Leonard Bradley also detailed plans last week to grant a conservation easement, where no construction would ever take place, on about 2.96 acres of land on the opposite side of Booth Pond.

Ericson said he also is working with Bucci to make Dowling Village more visitor friendly, suggesting that he move a planned public gathering place, complete with a village clock, away from the back side of proposed "Retail 9" in the development to "Restaurant 2."

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