The City of Newport is considering building a pavilion shelter over roughly ten parking spaces on Monmouth Street to provide a permanent meeting space for the Newport Farmers’ Market and a dedicated space for community events and festivals.
Located adjacent to the Pepper Pod restaurant, the space is “largely underutilized,” said Planning and Building Director Brian Steffen, who presented the proposal to the Newport Board of Commissioners on Monday. “It’s fairly often that there’s barely any cars in this lot as it is right now. So, we started looking at ways of activating that space.”
No official action on the project was taken at Monday’s meeting, and the proposal, Steffen said, was very “high level.”
Steffen estimated the shelter could be between 30 and 40 feet wide and about 80 feet long. He had generated some renderings of what such a shelter might look like by feeding an AI image generator some photos of the current parking lot from Google Maps and a textual description of the shelter.
Steffen estimated the construction cost at about $200,000, not including utilities or mechanical additions. He expressed that he was looking for ways the city could pay for it without dipping into Newport’s general fund: “interest earned off of bond investments and some potential other funds. “
Commissioners and city staff members were broadly in support of the measure and its potential to help “revitalize Monmouth Street,” as city manager John Hayden put it.
“I look forward to seeing this develop,” said board member Mike Radwanski.
More detailed discussions of the shelter and other potential changes to Monmouth Street will continue in the coming months.