Plans to redevelop a barren stretch of East Providence’s waterfront as a port facility for the offshore wind industry have been set aside, according to both city officials and a key developer on the project.
The South Quay, a 50-acre parcel of filled land vacant since its creation in the 1970s, had been heralded as Rhode Island’s ticket to lead the construction sector of America’s once-promising offshore wind industry.
The parcel’s size and deep water access were comparable to port facilities that other states successfully developed in New Bedford, New London, and Brooklyn, which employed hundreds of construction workers as private developers built America’s first utility-scale offshore wind farms.
Rhode Island set aside $35 million to support dredging and the construction of a new steel bulkhead at the South Quay. Companies that own and manage the South Quay pledged $35 million of their own in private investment. A ceremonial groundbreaking held in 2022, complete with golden shovels, drew the governor and every member of Rhode Island’s congressional delegation.
“This will be a hub for offshore wind development throughout the East Coast,” U.S. Sen. Jack Reed said at the East Providence groundbreaking.
But three years later, as the Trump administration freezes all federal permitting for offshore wind farms and disrupts ongoing construction in other ways, Rhode Island politicians have begun to acknowledge that the South Quay’s redevelopment is not going according to plan.
Public funds budgeted for the South Quay have quietly been rerouted to other projects and priorities.
“It’s not going to be a wind hub as it was originally intended to be,” East Providence Mayor Roberto DaSilva said in a recent interview with Ocean State Media’s Ian Donnis, “but it will be a port that will serve our state and our community and create economic development.”
Other coastal communities once bullish on offshore wind — from Salem, Mass. to Bridgeport, Conn., to Staten Island — have also shifted or paused plans to develop port facilities geared toward the industry. Managers of existing offshore wind ports in New Bedford, New London, and Lower Alloways Creek, New Jersey are looking to other industries now to find new tenants.
Waterson Terminal Services, a port operator, is still working to redevelop East Providence’s South Quay for other industrial uses in partnership with the parcel’s owner, RI Waterfront Enterprises LLC. But the potential industrial uses for the South Quay remain vague.
“What they’re trying to do is try to partner up with somebody who needs space to create industry, to create manufacturing, to create jobs, that needs access to a deep port,” DaSilva said. “The other thing we’re looking at is hospitality. We want to be able to have transportation from East Providence to Newport to Pawtucket to other places using the water as a way to bring economic activity.”
A spokesperson for Waterson Terminal Services declined to make the company’s president and CEO, Chris Waterson, available for an interview.
“Projects like these may take years to develop and we remain optimistic about its future success,” said the spokesperson, Bill Fischer, in a brief statement.
