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By Nancy B. Solomon, AIA

 

Case Study Historic Pontiac Mills, Warwick, Rhode Island. Estimated date of completion: not available The firm of D’Agostino Izzo Quirk Architects (D’AIQ), based in Somerville, Massachusetts, has taken a prominent role in addressing brownfield conditions at Historic Pontiac Mills, in Warwick, Rhode Island. The 350,000-square-foot site along the Pawtuxet River was home to the original Fruit of the Loom textile mill, dating back to the mid-1800s. Production stopped in the 1970s. In 1986, a landfill east of the property was designated by EPA as a potential hazardous-waste site; a tiny portion of this landfill extended onto the Pontiac Mills site. In addition, fuel oil, arsenic, beryllium, and lead were found in other locations. The property owners at the time wanted to sell, but no lender would touch such a site unless it also received brownfield designation.   Historic Pontiac Mills (above), once home to Fruit of the Loom, is to be converted into multipurpose spaces. Photography: © Richard Marthers   In 1996, D’AIQ began helping a developer interested in the property. Neither had prior experience with brownfields. “But we had experience with other types of consultants,” says project architect John Giangregorio, a principal at D’AIQ. The architecture firm found an environmental engineer with whom they felt comfortable, and so began the complex process. Although the first developer never exercised his option to buy, nor did a second developer for whom D’AIQ also worked, the firm gradually became attached to the site. Explains Giangregorio, “We had been developing good relationships with the town while shepherding the various master plans through the city development process.” So when the third developer put an option on the property, they too hired D’AIQ and the team of technical consultants that they had cultivated over the years. This third developer, Hampton Hodges, bought the property in January 2003, soon after the brownfields settlement agreement was reached. The architecture firm managed the whole project. “Environmental engineers take a narrower focus: If they can satisfy the state’s department of environment, their job is done.” The environmental engineer worked directly for the developer, so the architect had no liability for that part of the work. The civil engineer and landscape architect worked under the architect. All four professionals—with their varying expertise—looked at options together. The most recent master plan calls for the conversion of existing structures into office, hotel, and retail spaces. New construction will include a portion of the hotel complex and a three-story office building. The project will be implemented in three phases, progressing from the west side, which requires minimal environmental remediation, to the more complicated cleanup on the east. In this way, the owner will begin to generate income from the development in one phase to undertake the more costly remediation in the next. The design team negotiated with the Rhode Island Department of Development to cap the landfill portion of the site—which, as it turned out, only contained relatively nonhazardous automobile fluff and textile remnants—rather than excavate and remove it, and to build the parking in phases. Two layers of asphalt matching the footprint of the planned garage will be applied as an impermeable cap over the northern portion of the landfill in the first phase of construction. The southern portion will be covered by an impermeable membrane sheet and 18 inches of soil supporting low-growing vegetation. Piles, which will minimize disturbance of the contaminants and extend deep enough below the landfill to more stable ground, will be driven for the garage’s foundation at the beginning of the second phase. Giangregorio’s advice: “Know the process. Some can be learned by having a good relationship with the regulatory agencies. And find an environmental engineer whom you can trust.” N.B.S.