Davisville is a village in the town of North Kingstown and county of Washington County in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

Rhode Island Rhode Island ( ) is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Connecticut to its west; Massachusetts to its north and east; and the Atlantic Ocean to its south via Rhode Island Sound and Block Is ...

. It was formerly the home of the Davisville Naval Construction Battalion Center, which housed the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...

SeaBees United States Naval Construction Battalions, better known as the Navy Seabees, form the U.S. Naval Construction Forces (NCF). The Seabee nickname is a heterograph of the initial letters "CB" from the words "Construction Battalion". Dependi ...

Village description

Both

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak (; ), is the national Passenger train, passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates intercity rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous United Stat ...

and MBTA's Providence/Stoughton Line pass through Davisville, though there is no railroad station here. A proposed MBTA station is currently being considered.

Davisville NCBC

It was located at

Quonset Point Quonset Point (), also known simply as Quonset, is a small peninsula in Narragansett Bay in the town of North Kingstown, Rhode Island. Its name is widely known from the Quonset hut, which was first manufactured there. ''Quonset'' is an Algo ...

Narragansett Bay Narragansett Bay is a bay and estuary on the north side of Rhode Island Sound covering , of which is in Rhode Island. The bay forms New England's largest estuary, which functions as an expansive natural harbor and includes a small archipelago. S ...

, an area now included in the town of North Kingstown. The Navy acquired the property in 1939 and built Naval Air Station Quonset Point. In 1942, adjoining properties were developed for training Seabees, including the Naval Construction Battalion Center (NCBC) at Davisville. After

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, the Naval Air Station remained in operation, but the NCBC was inactive until 1951, when the site was designated Headquarters, NCBC. The Naval Air Station was decommissioned in 1974. NCBC Davisville was selected for closure during the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC 1991) program and operational closure occurred on April 1, 1994. The land eventually was obtained by the State of Rhode Island.

Redevelopment

The State of Rhode Island has invested heavily into the transportation infrastructure of the Quonset Business Park, including rail, water/sewer, and the $170 million Rte 403 Connector, a 4-lane highway connecting the Park to Route 4. Today, the Park is the largest industrial park by employment levels in R.I. It is located on

, Route 1 and Route 403. This master-planned business park had, in 2007, nearly 150 businesses with infrastructure capacity for 18,000 total employees. The largest business is

General Dynamics Electric Boat General Dynamics Electric Boat (GDEB) is a subsidiary of General Dynamics Corporation. It has been the primary builder of submarines for the United States Navy for more than 100 years. The company's main facilities are a shipyard in Groton, Co ...

. Also located in the Park is the North Atlantic Distribution, Inc (NORAD), the 7th largest automobile importer in North America. In 2011, the facility imported 150,519 autos and another 41,797 autos came by rail. There are some thousand cars at any time stored within the Park. Within the park, the Quonset State Airport, which uses the former Navy Air Station Quonset Point runway, is managed by the Rhode Island Airport Corporation, is a general aviation facility with an runway. Also located within the park are the Seabee Museum and Memorial Park, a non-profit museum developed on by former U.S. Navy Seabees which includes the former Navy concrete chapel, seven vintage Quonset huts, and a huge Seabee statue; and the non-profit Quonset Air Museum located in buildings that were originally built for the Naval Air Station Quonset Point (NASQP). In 2007, the State of Rhode Island announced plans for a $150-million mega-yacht shipbuilding and repair yard that includes a training center on within the Park, and an $80 million

mixed-use development Mixed use is a type of urban development, urban design, urban planning and/or a zoning classification that blends multiple uses, such as residential, commercial, cultural, institutional, or entertainment, into one space, where those functions ...

: The Gateway Project. The over Gateway Project will include a hotel, visitor center, local grocer, drug store, coffee shop, restaurants, a bank, small shops, two anchor stores and will surround the Seabee Museum and Memorial Park. However, one of the anchor stores closed soon after opening and remains vacant; by 2016 no visitor center, drug store, or coffee shop had been constructed.

References

{{Coord, 41, 36, 48, N, 71, 28, 31, W, type:city_region:US-RI, display=title North Kingstown, Rhode Island Villages in Washington County, Rhode Island Narragansett Bay Populated coastal places in Rhode Island Providence metropolitan area Villages in Rhode Island