CRMC panel denies request to ease shoreline development restrictions for Quidnessett Country Club

Historical photographs, topographical maps and two hours of expert testimony Tuesday afternoon weren’t enough to convince a panel of state regulators to ease development restrictions along the shoreline of a North Kingstown country club.

A subcommittee of the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) voted 3-0 to deny Quidnessett Country Club’s petition to reclassify a section of waterfront along its golf course.

But the country club’s petition filed last April isn’t sunk yet. The subcommittee’s denial serves as an advisory recommendation, which will be considered and voted on by the full council at a future meeting. No date had yet been scheduled as of Tuesday night.

Robin Main, the attorney for Quidnessett, declined to comment.

Reached by phone Tuesday night, Janice Matthews, vice president of The Jan Companies, which owns the country club, said she was unable to talk.

If approved, the water type reclassification — from the existing Type 1 “conservation area” to a less stringent Type 2 “low intensity use,” could allow for the club to build a permanent structure, like an illegal seawall, along its waterfront property line.

Which is exactly what prompted the application.

Quidnessett built a 600-foot-long rock wall along its northeastern property line in January 2023, despite being expressly prohibited under the Type 1 water designation. After state and federal regulators found out, issuing a series of warnings and fines beginning in the summer of 2023, Quidnessett’s petition sought a water type reclassification that would be retroactive to the wall’s construction.

The proposal sparked strong public reaction, with more than 300 pages of public comment submitted to the CRMC ahead of an initial public hearing in September. The subcommittee delayed a vote at the Sept. 24 meeting in order to give Quidnessett more time to present evidence for its application.

For Save the Bay, among the most vocal critics of the country club, the council’s recommendation Tuesday was cause for celebration.

“This is great news in the short-term,” Jed Thorp, advocacy director for Save the Bay, said in a phone interview Tuesday night. “A lot of times with this stuff, you feel the outcome is predetermined. It felt very unscripted to me at the end.”

Indeed, the trio of experts brought in by Quidnessett to testify in a quasi-judicial style examination came ready to make their case. 

The longest presentation, by environmental consultant Joseph Klinger, who helped the club submit its reclassification petition, featured an array of aerial photographs, topographical and geological maps dating back 70 years. To Klinger, early excavation in the area, along with development of the country club and nearby health care facilities, proved the shoreline should never actually have been restricted under a Type 1 designation.

“It wasn’t in natural undisturbed conditions,” Klinger, vice president and principal environmental scientist at East Greenwich-based Ecotones Inc., said. “The adjacent mainland uses are recreation and residential, not conservation.”

Yet federal designations in the late 1970s, and subsequent water type classifications formalized by the CRMC a few years later, suggest otherwise. 

“This was always a Type 1 shoreline, even in the early iterations of the program as approved by NOAA back in the 1970s,” Jeff Willis, CRMC executive director, said during the meeting. “I don’t know why it’s argued it should have been Type 2, when it’s been this way for over 50 years.”

Bruce Lofgren, a CRMC coastal policy analyst, also noted the half-century old development restrictions in a Sept. 20 staff report recommending the council deny the reclassification. The report highlighted the sensitive nature of nearby salt marshes, marine wildlife and the shoreline overlooking Narragansett Bay.

Area land use has increased in the last 50 years, including a slew of nearby condominiums and expansion of a nursing home facility directly north of the country club. But the fragile coastline, battered by severe storms and rising sea levels, remains undeveloped.

Council member Don Gomez was unpersuaded by Klinger’s comparisons with other waterfront golf courses in the state that border Type 2 waters. 

“I think there are some other factors,” Gomez said. “They’re not easily compared.”

And the argument that the golf course should not be altered to protect the course from shoreline erosion — as made by Tim Gerrish, a Providence-based landscape architect who testified on Quidnessett’s behalf — held little sway as well.

“It’s frankly irrelevant,” Thorp said in a later interview of the emphasis on the golf course’s design.

The 18-hole golf course designed by architect Geoffrey Cornish opened in 1960, and is not listed in federal or state historic registers. 

Questioned by the council, Lofgren acknowledged the benefit of “digesting” the new information presented on Tuesday, but also said he stood by the existing recommendation to deny the reclassification.

If a water type reclassification is granted by the full council, the club must then apply for a permit to build any kind of permanent structure along the shoreline. For now, the illegal seawall still stands.

Subcommittee member Patricia Reynolds was absent from the meeting.

This story has been updated to include a response from Robin Main, the attorney for Quidnessett Country Club.