A notice of City Council Workshop has been posted by the City of Newport on their website.

The City Council Workshop, which is to be held at 6 pm on June 10th at Council Chambers at City Hall, will be held regarding “Spring Project – Traffic Studies”. The workshop is open to the public.

The Historic Newport Spring Project, or “Spring Project” as described by the City, sits at the site of Coffey’s Gas Station and would be transformed into a park to “celebrate and interpret the city’s founding and its role in securing religious freedom in this country”.

The Newport Spring Leadership Committee shared the preliminary design for the Newport Spring Site in July 2018.

Among many things that would change in that area and what likely will be most discussed at this workshop is closure of the City-owned Court House Street between Touro Street and Park Place.


Detail of proposed new traffic pattern (Image via L+A Landscape Architecture)

According to the Project’s website, “a multi-year traffic study requested by the City and conducted by the award-winning firm BETA Group, Inc., found that traffic stacking will not increase due to these changes, and those residents continuing to utilize a downtown route will have a minimal impact to drive time and no impact on the amount of available parking”.

According to their website, their project is described as follows;

“The Historic Newport Spring Project’s central goal is to celebrate, at the place of Newport’s founding, a key and integral part of Newport’s history that has been overlooked by historians, governments, and indeed many of our citizens for centuries: that Newport was explicitly founded on the values of freedom of religion, religious tolerance, and separation of church and state.  
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Once complete, the Historic Newport Spring park will preserve this unique historically significant site in a manner that provides public access and civic enjoyment, improves traffic and pedestrian circulation and safety, and fosters cultural and economic vitality”.

For more information, visit
http://www.historicnewportspring.org/