Chapel View isn’t just geographically located near the middle of Cranston – it’s also transformed into a robust shopping and residential center for residents of the city. On Thursday night the Ordinance Committee unanimously approved a zoning change for the part of site cornering New London Avenue and Sockanosset, which includes Shaw’s, REI and Chapel Grille.

The City Council will need to approve the change.

Present at the meeting were Kelly Coates, senior vice president of the Carpionato Group, and their legal representation, Tom Moses. In an amended proposal to the committee, Carpionato requested that the complex be changed to a Commercial 5 (heavy business) zone instead of a mixed planned development zone.

The change means reduced city regulation on the site. Without the change Moses said the Chapel View project had to basically go to the city council with every change they were going to make, from the color of store signs to what type of store could go on each floor of a building. Every use of every part of every building is identified for an NPD zone, he said. He said that the project had 27 amendments in recent years because of the zoning classification.

Planning director Peter Lapolla was a proponent of the zone change, saying that thousands of man-hours have been spent in the planning department because Chapel View has been considered an NPD since 1998.

“Maybe the NPD was necessary 20 years ago,” he said.

He argued that the complex didn’t need all the regulation it was under now, and the change to a Commercial 5 zone would be capable of regulating the shopping center sufficiently.

The broader interest from the community on the Chapel View complex is the increasing development of the area, which already houses an REI store, Alex And Ani offices, Shaw’s, restaurants, and plenty of commercial shops. Cranston residents took the opportunity Thursday night to voice their concerns to both the committee and the representatives of the Carpionato group who were present.

Gretchen Bingle took the floor to raise questions about traffic congestion on Sockanosset, Pontiac, and Route 2 because of how popular Chapel View already is. She also asked about what kind of environmental effects the continued development would have on the area.

Paulina DeRosa said that there is already too much traffic congestion since the last major string of developments at Chapel View, and it’s already dangerous just trying to take a left out of Garden City to get onto Sockanosset.

Kelly Coates responded to these concerns, saying that the Carpionato Group has been working with the council already to do traffic studies on the area as they continue development around the large complex, which he said isn’t required.

In speaking with the citizens there who have issues with traffic, Coates was in the process of setting up a community discussion, whether it will be at the Cranston Public Library or elsewhere. A time and date has not yet been established, although they’re trying to meet in the coming month.

During the discussion, council President Michael Farina added this:

“In reality, development is good. It needs to be measured, it needs to be tactical, and it needs to make sense for the area…we’ll see what the future holds for that site. I do know that there is a lot of development in Cranston. As a council, we need to make sure we’re doing things the right way, alerting the residents, taking the right approach, and making sure we do things that benefit the entire city.”