The Good 5 Cent Cigar

Issue date: 4/23/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Lauren Gingerella The research park is slated for North Woods in an area known as the "Century Forest."

04/23/09 - In the waning days of President Robert L. Carothers' administration, controversy concerning the construction of a research park in the University of Rhode Island's North Woods has begun to boil over.

The university publicly announced plans to build a research park in the area in 2007.

The park would provide facilities for URI researchers and corporate partners to research and develop new technologies, as well as an alternative revenue stream for the funding of research, according to Carothers.

The state has been steadily decreasing university funding since he came to URI, Carothers said at last night's Student Senate meeting, "one of the results of that is that research enterprise at the University of Rhode Island has been starved."

Students and faculty have spoken in opposition to the plan on the grounds that it will destroy a valuable natural and educational resource.

Professors Keith Killingbeck and Francis Golet have spearheaded faculty opposition to development in the North Woods.

The planned site of the research park would infringe upon a 20- to 25-acre plot of almost 100-year-old trees, now known as "the century forest," they said.

According to a document prepared by Killingbeck and Golet, this particular patch of forest is used by 16 courses every year, including biology, botany, wildlife and soil conservation courses.

Killingbeck teaches two of these.

These courses include 1,200 to 1,300 students yearly, plus an unknown number of students participating in labs and independent research projects, Golet said.

Originally, plans for the park called for 21 acres, including two large parking garages and six research buildings.

Under a compromise proposed by the administration, the footprint of the park would be condensed to 11 acres, and 150 acres of forest would be set-aside in a preservation trust, said Vice President of Administration Robert Weygand.

But construction in the area would be damaging to the forest, Killingbeck said.

"Eleven acres doesn't sound like a lot of the total," he said. "But anytime you have any kind of development where there are buildings and cars the natural nature ... of the area is diminished significantly."

Continued...

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