NORTH PROVIDENCE – Town Council members are planning to question the administration on why no stop-work order has been issued yet for a new self-storage facility on Douglas Avenue. The lack of an order has been despite the council voting at the start of the month to put one in place.
Councilor Mario Martone, an attorney by trade, told The Local Insider that he and other councilors intend to ask plenty of questions at a special council meeting scheduled just to discuss this issue on Wednesday, Sept. 16, at 5:30 p.m.
Martone said they plan to “figure out what’s going on and why one one is willing to issue a stop-work order.”
The Local Insider reported on Sept. 2 that the council had voted to issue the stop-work order, and then on Sept. 8 that no order was in effect yet. That lack of an enforceable order is still true, as work on the project has continued unabated.
Martone said he agrees that any legal stop-work order has to be issued by Planning Director Brent Wiegand, and not the council.
“The reason he is not issuing it doesn’t make any sense to me,” he said.
Neighbors have been angered by the fact that the facility near Shaw’s is so much different than what was sold to the town back in 2017, looming above their back yards instead of being substantially lower and scattered over several buildings.
Martone said the town’s assessment that the project isn’t in violation just doesn’t make sense. Based on a plain reading of the ordinance on a zone change in 2017, it was approved based on the plan submitted at the time, he said.
“What is being built there, even by his (Wiegand’s) own admission, is not in conformance with plans submitted in 2017,” said Martone. “I don’t think it’s particularly complicated, which is why I’m so shocked that it (the stop-work order) hasn’t been issued.”
Nothing explained to him to this point has satisfied him on the administration’s position, said Martone, and Wednesday’s event will represent an effort to understand their position better.
