The Carpionato Group announced Monday that CEO Kelly Coates and outside counsel Angelo Marocco are ending more than 30 years with the company, removing the executive who has been its public voice on the former Newport Grand property.
Both retire as trustees in October, with Coates stepping down as CEO and Marocco as outside counsel in November. Domenic Carpionato, son of the late founder Alfred Carpionato, joins as a trustee alongside his mother, Sheryl Carpionato. Rhode Island real estate lawyer Charles “Chip” Rogers also joins as a trustee.
The Johnston company bought the 23.5-acre site at 150 Admiral Kalbfus Road from Twin River for $10.15 million in 2018. In July 2019, Coates unveiled a $100 million proposal called Newport North End — two six-story hotels with 260 rooms, two six-story apartment buildings, and research, office, medical, retail and restaurant space — which Carpionato called the largest private development project in the city’s history.
That plan did not advance. The City Council imposed a six-month moratorium on North End development later in 2019 while it revised zoning and its comprehensive plan, and the pandemic followed. The company pushed back its timeline repeatedly.
The company’s website now lists Newport North End under commercial and retail properties, with 106,346 square feet of gross leasable area, a downloadable brochure and lease plans, and a named leasing contact. It describes the site as “reimagined as a dynamic mixed-use destination” but the listing itself is a leasing offering, with traffic counts, parking and area demographics — and the trade area data still labeled as Newport Grand casino data.
At roughly 106,000 square feet, what the company is now marketing is a fraction of the more than 500,000 square feet described in 2019, and the listing makes no reference to hotels or apartments.
Coates presented the 2019 plan at a news conference in the casino’s foyer and has handled the company’s public statements about the site since.
