The Plan Commission voted  April 4 for initial approval for development of the former Cranston Print Works building, which would bring 129 apartments and a new storage facility to the city.

The company is hoping to break ground on the project sometime in late 2024 or early 2025, but doing so will require a zoning change in addition to the unanimous vote for the initial plan’s approval. The area is currently zoned for restricted industry use. In order for the master plan to move forward the City Council will need  to approve the Plan Commission’s recommendation to rezone for residential use. The City Council will meet  April 24, however, the agenda hasn’t been released.

“The city has been eagerly awaiting to see this redevelopment for a long time,” Planning Director Jason Pezzullo said to Providence Business News. “To actually get master plan approval is a milestone.”

Cranston Print Works, located at 1381 Cranston St., has been a Cranston  landmark  for over 100 years. Project manager Chris Reynolds of Brady Sullivan Properties, out of Manchester, NH, said that an important part of this project  is the preservation of the building and its history.

“The project itself, the mill building, is in tough shape,” Reynolds said. “It has deteriorated from not being used for many years. There is water damage, and we plan to preserve and restore all of the mill structures. We’re not going to do any demolition. We’re going to work with the historical society and preserve all of the buildings.”

Reynolds said that this property differs from other mill buildings the company has redeveloped, such as the Anthony and Harris Mills in Coventry, due to its shape and construction. Traditional mill buildings, Reynolds explained, are typically a long straight building with three or four stories and many windows to let light in. The former Print Works building, however, is built differently.

“This mill was kind of built upon each other,” said Reynolds. “So there’s a lot of buildings but not a lot of windows. There’s some light monitors up top, but there’s a lot of dark spaces which are not good for residential. That’s why this project is working to make it all useable and to repurpose the mill while not having to demolition anything.”

This is not the first time that plans to renovate the area have been brought before the Plan Commission, but this is  the first to gain approval.

“I’ve been here since 2005,” Pezzullo said. “This is the third time that developers have come to make a pitch for the site, but this is the first time that anyone with a real track record has come to really do this.”

The 129-unit redevelopment will have an assortment of three-bedroom, two-bedroom and single bedroom options, and will include a 100,000 square foot storage facility to utilize the remaining part of the property. Rent for the apartments will range from $1,800 for single bedroom apartments to $2,200 for the two bedroom model.

“The good thing about storage versus, you know, a restaurant or some other type of space that would bring a lot of traffic or noise, is that it isn’t like those other things that aren’t always the best use of a space where people are trying to sleep,” Reynolds said. “Storage is a low traffic environment. Very few people need to be going out and back in. It’s kind of your perfect neighbor. It compliments the residential very well since it doesn’t have those noise and parking constraints.”

Parking, Reynolds said, is the only concern Brady Sullivan Properties doesn’t have to worry about in the process of remodeling the old mill. Unlike other mills they have redeveloped, which are very small and have mill housing all around, Reynolds said that the Print Works site is huge and has a lot of open space and area around the buildings. This open space will provide more than adequate parking, a concern Reynolds said is common in projects such as this. 

“This site is going to a great residential complex with kind of a campus like atmosphere when it’s complete,” Reynolds said. “The challenge of mill development is always parking because they’re often small sites. I mean everybody used to work to work, right? With this site, it is much bigger and a lot more spacious with a lot of green space and open space. Instead of having one giant parking lot, we can have multiple smaller parking lots to make it feel more like that campus redevelopment more than just an industrial site.”