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BORN TO BE RILED
Gail Greenwood has lounged across the cover of Rolling Stone in blue-spangled hot pants. Now she’s driving Middletown developers crazy with her anti-sprawl crusade. When did this passionate punk-rock mama learn to love the great outdoors?
By Jerry O’Brien
Don’t bother asking Gail Greenwood to
slow down or shut up. Chain-chewing Twizzlers, tapping
black-nail-polished fingers on her kitchen table and sprinkling
“omigod” and “oy” into every other
sentence, Greenwood is a fierce and charming force of nature, a
woman whose drive and determination leave you breathless.
Whether she’s dancing in front of a stack of Marshall
amplifiers, a Gibson Thunderbird bass guitar strapped across
her body, or addressing the town Zoning Board of Review with a
sheaf of paperwork cradled in her arms, Greenwood has a
chin-up, shoulders-back attitude that proves she means
business.
Depending on where you stand in Middletown
these days, Greenwood is either Athena or Medusa: a smart,
savvy woman unafraid to mix it up with longtime power players
on Aquidneck Island, or a brash upstart with a high-octane
motor mouth. For the past year, she’s planted herself in
the midst of a long-standing dispute about the fate of open
space and the rights of commercial developers.
“Don’t Mall Middletown”
reads the bumper sticker on her road-scarred ’91 Jetta.
It’s her ambition to tattoo that legend on the soul of
every person in town. As the founder of and inadvertent
spokeswoman for Middletown First, a residents’ group
devoted to what they describe as “kicking asphalt and
busting sprawl,” Greenwood has earned the warm affection
of local community gadflies twice her age, the professional
approval of regional and national anti-sprawl activists and the
grudging respect of her critics.
She’s a graphic designer and Web
mistress with a flair for the weird. She’s an insatiable
music fan who’s never liked the Beatles. She’s a
professional musician who played bass with the rock band Belly
and appeared in blue-spangled hot pants on the cover of Rolling
Stone. So what’s Gail Greenwood doing before municipal
boards in Middletown, hiring traffic consultants and quoting
from the town’s zoning regulations? Why did
“Omigod, those pants. I know,
they’re awful. What can I do? I don’t have a
lot of
dress-up clothes, all right?” Greenwood says of an appearance last year.
It wasn’t an appearance on a
smoke-filled stage before thousands of fans. It was in the
Middletown Town Hall before the Zoning Board of Review, a
rather sedate bunch, with just a few dozen folks in the
audience. No one there probably knew that Greenwood had pouted
languidly with Belly bandmates Tanya Donelly and brothers Chris
and Tom Gorman for a cover story in Rolling Stone in April
1995, that the band and its first recording, Star, were
nominated for Grammy awards. The magazine dubbed them
“the shiny, happy people of post-punk power pop.”
If anyone seated in the metal folding chairs of the Town
Council chamber had known about Greenwood’s rock
credentials, they wouldn’t have cared, anyway. What they
cared about was the proposed 108,000-square-foot strip mall
that a developer wanted to build on the traffic-clogged retail
artery, West Main Road. They were against it, and Greenwood was
their chief advocate.
“I’m really doing this because
I got sick of hearing myself complain,” Greenwood says.
“I just figured, if I’m going to complain so much,
it’s time to put my money where my mouth is. I worried
about being considered a freak, but it might help my rock
career.”
At that zoning board meeting last year,
Greenwood spoke with a confident swagger, her anti-sprawl
remarks laced with passion and a dark humor that suggested
awareness of her position’s inevitable doom that time
around. Indeed, the development was eventually approved. But
nothing was going to keep Greenwood from getting her comments
on the record. As she was trying to address the board, the
insistent voice of the developer’s lawyer, Robert M.
Silva, could be clearly and distractingly heard as he spoke to
an associate seated next to him. “Do you have anything
you’d like to share with the rest of the class?”
snapped Greenwood at Silva, prompting the board chairman to
admonish the lawyer to keep still.
Greenwood grew up in Leave-It-To-Beaver
Barrington, in a house on Salisbury Street, not far from East
Providence. She has two sisters and a brother. The family had a
blast together. Her parents, both of whom graduated from the
Rhode Island School of Design, encouraged their children to
think for themselves and supported their growing interests. For
Gail, that meant art and music. She graduated from RISD in 1985
with a degree in illustration. Her drawing and design talents
have been honed over the past twenty years in her steady work
as a freelance illustrator. She is currently a business partner
with her boyfriend, Chil Mott, in Greenwood Associates, the
family graphic design business carried on by Gail’s
sister, Betsy Greenwood. Gail and Chil moved to Middletown to
be close to the strong, slow-breaking waves at Sachuest Beach,
which explains the surf racks on the car.
Music has always been a passion. At twelve,
Greenwood had Neil Diamond’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull
at the top of her chart. It didn’t stay there long. By
the next year, the snapping, propulsive bass lines of Marshall
“Rock” Jones of the Ohio Players led her into a
funk groove that still excites her. She played the baritone
horn in the marching band at Barrington Junior High School
(“Nobody wanted to play it — I felt bad for the
band teacher”), but it wasn’t until after
graduation that she started thrashing guitars and screaming
vocals in assorted garage and basement bands. She got her first
big rush of rock adrenaline as rhythm guitarist and bassist
with the Dames, a band that won the WBRU Rock Hunt in 1986 and
played regularly at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel in
Providence. One of their signature tunes was “Loco
Amore.” A tour of duty with the rock band Boneyard
followed, which included North American appearances with heavy
hitters such as the Goo Goo Dolls and Social Distortion.
The rush got a lot more heady in early
1993, when Newporter Tanya Donelly, a founding member of
Throwing Muses, one of the country’s best
alternative-rock bands, asked Greenwood to join her new band,
Belly. The group’s bass player had split shortly after
the release of Belly’s first album, Star. With a
demanding road schedule set up to promote the recording, which
was generating strong reviews and sales, Donelly needed a team
player with great chops and a strong constitution. The mix
worked. Belly undertook a grueling tour, performing 195
concerts in fifteen countries that year. Star hit gold record
status, with more than 500,000 copies sold. The album peaked at
number fifty-nine on Billboard’s Top 200. The single
“Feed the Tree” reached number one on the Modern
Rock Tracks chart and was one of Billboard’s Hot 100
Singles of the year.
Momentum grew. The following year, Belly
was nominated for two Grammy awards, for best new artist and
best alternative music album, and two MTV Video Music awards,
for best new artist (Stone Temple Pilots got the nod) and best
alternative video (Nirvana). The group’s follow-up album,
King, was released in February 1995. Reviews were solid. Sales
weren’t. Though Belly toured at a frantic pace to promote
the release, the sleigh was heading for a tree. The band broke
up in July 1996.
Getting on the cover of Rolling Stone was
not exactly a dream come true. “My memories of that day
are horrible,” Greenwood says. “It was a long,
tough day. We were told what to wear, how to pose. We all ended
up in tears. The pictures were awful — they didn’t
even airbrush them. I mean, I look at them and all I see is
razor stubble. But, yeah, it was a great thing.”
A loud-volume, no-frills bass player with a
head-banging stage style, Greenwood joined the L.A.-based L7
for three years (“It was a tough commute”), then
hooked up with Canadian rocker Bif Naked, spending much of 2001
on tour. Greenwood’s latest musical incarnation is
playing, singing and writing with her boyfriend in the band
Benny Sizzler. The group’s off-the-wall Web site, a
Greenwood/Mott creation, is a window into her skewed, satiric
sensibility. “Rock hard or don’t rock at
all,” she harmonizes in “Sacred Crowd
Pleaser,” “Bang your head in a shower stall.”
The
A vegetarian since she was fourteen,
Greenwood is straightedge and proud of it. Despite years in the
music business, she says she has never smoked, used alcohol or
tried drugs. There’s a rotary telephone on her kitchen
wall. Her hobby is aviation, especially World War II fighters.
Her backyard is a source of delight — not so much because
of the thriving gardens but because of the propeller noise from
nearby Newport State Airport, which she loves. She has a sweet
tooth. She writes important messages on the back of her hand in
ink.
In the 1970s, when Greenwood was
growing up, her parents used to drive from Barrington to Middletown
on hot summer days so the kids could enjoy Sachuest Beach. Coming off
the Mount Hope Bridge, the car would turn toward West Main Road, which
leads south into Newport. Like a lot of Rhode Islanders, Greenwood remembers
when the vistas on either side of Route 114 were mainly farmland and
dairy pasture. A couple of years ago, driving home to Forest Avenue
after months on the road performing, she felt as if she was seeing West
Main Road for the first time. Flanking each side of the four-lane highway
was one commercial building after another — strip malls, fast-food
restaurants, hotels, banks, supermarket plazas — all trimmed with
asphalt parking lots, overhead lighting and garish signs. She had lived
in Middletown for a decade. Didn’t she notice this was happening?
“Years ago, we all used to complain
about the Chicken City sign on West Main Road — how big
and ugly it was,” Greenwood recalls. “But looking
back, that was a real place. It had character. There is no
character on West Main Road now. It’s just sad.”
What finally helped Greenwood turn emotion into action,
though, was learning that one of West Main Road’s
landmark buildings, the Vanicek house, was slated for
demolition. Built in 1937, the ten-room Dutch colonial had not
only seen three generations of family grow and thrive; the
household and the acre of rich farmland behind it had also
stood grandly as an image of Middletown’s rural heritage.
The family sold the property to a man who
wanted to put up an automobile repair shop. He was willing to
give the house away for free to anyone who could afford to have
the structure moved. There were no takers. The house was razed
in 2001. Where Dorothy Vanicek once tended her rose bushes, a
cinderblock garage now stands.
Pictures of the Vanicek house, from the
cozy red and white kitchen to the spacious bedrooms upstairs,
can be seen on the Web site that Greenwood helped create when
she founded Middletown First, www.middletownfirst.org, a new
electronic home for anyone who wants to learn about the
regulations that govern land use and development in Middletown.
The group’s mission is not anti-growth. It is
anti-sprawl. Supporters believe that residents and town
officials who are armed with knowledge of the town’s
zoning regulations and who are persistent can deal successfully
with developers, their lawyers and their paid consultants.
Middletown First contends this group has subdivided property in
Middletown for fifty years without regard for visual beauty,
for quality of life or for what future generations deserve to
enjoy.
The Web site was created with former
Middletown Town Planner Michelle Maher, who now runs her own
Bristol-based consulting firm, Practical Planning Services, and
was paid for by less than $4,000 in grants. It is a model for
how the Internet can be a valuable civic partner. The site
includes a free downloadable copy of the town’s
Comprehensive Plan, a 231-page document that you’d
otherwise have to pay to copy from the Town Hall. The site also
has applications, and checklists for subdivisions, variances
and appeals. It has the names, addresses and telephone numbers
of every Middletown municipal and school official. Most
important, the site has an interactive feature that allows
users to click on any portion of a Middletown map to see how
each neighborhood is zoned and what the zoning classifications
mean. From there you can find important regulations such as
minimum lot size and permitted, prohibited and special-permit
uses.
“It’s fantastic,” Arthur
E. Benner, of Namquid Drive, says of the Web site. Benner is a
retired Raytheon supervisor and a familiar presence at council
meetings and budget hearings. “It’s amazing what
Gail has done for such a small amount of money. The town has
spent $3 million to $4 million on information systems in the
past few years and never did anything like this. It’s
great that Gail has taken such an interest in the town.
She’s really taken it to heart. She’s inspiring to
other people.”Greenwood, who is now a member of the
town’s Conservation Commission, attributes her drive to
the inspiration of longtime residents such as Benner and
otherolder Middletown community activists, including Arthur
Taddei, Vincent Sonsini and Manny Mello. “That’s
one of the reasons I do Middletown First — for those
guys,” Greenwood says. “Retired folks are
Middletown’s great untapped resource.”
Greenwood’s first target was a large
retail plaza proposed for the north end of West Main Road, not
far from the Super Stop and Shop plaza. Bailey’s Brook,
which leads to a portion of Aquidneck Island’s water
supply, runs through the parcel from north to south, and part
of the land lies in a watershed district. The plaza’s
developer, James Chadwick of Massachusetts, needed a
special-use permit to build. After months of meetings before
the zoning board, Chadwick won his permit. Middletown Square,
as the plaza will be called, is supposed to include Petco and
Linens ’n Things stores.
Robert M. Silva, Chadwick’s lawyer,
is a former member of the Middletown Town Council and a popular
choice for developers in their appearances before the council
and the zoning and planning boards. Silva seems to dig deep to
find something nice to say about Gail Greenwood, but he does
it.
“She has a tremendous amount of
energy and zeal,” Silva says. “She’s taken up
a cause that she describes as not anti-development but
anti-sprawl. The only problem is that her definition of sprawl
is not what my definition is or what sprawl might be considered
in a reasonable reading of the Comprehensive Plan and the
Zoning Ordinance.” Silva says the developer spent
time and money making sure that the watershed would be
protected: adjacent to the brook, permanent easements were
granted to the Aquidneck Island Land Trust, a runoff retention
system has been designed, curb cuts will be reduced and a
traffic light installed. “[The developer] is trying to be
a good corporate neighbor, but Gail doesn’t see it that
way,” Silva says.
Silva doesn’t pull any punches when
he criticizes the group for hiring lawyers who have represented
the petroleum industry.
“The attorneys that are representing
Middletown First have appeared at other hearings in other
jurisdictions in opposition to any such gas-facility expansion
for Stop and Shop and for BJ’s. It’s more than just
coincidental that these very same attorneys represent Drake
Petroleum Company of Providence, which distributes to more than
600 gas stations from Maine to Florida. Their lawyers have
filed petitions in Westerly, Cumberland and elsewhere to object
to Stop and Shop getting municipal permitting for a gas
facility.”
“I think Middletown First is being
used by Drake Petroleum,” Silva adds.The latest turn has
Silva representing the company that owns the Super Stop and
Shop plaza in a bid to build a gas station in its West Main
Road parking lot, which Middletown First opposes. In 2001, the
Town Council made a preemptive strike against such freestanding
gas stations when it killed a zoning amendment that would have
allowed them as a permitted use in shopping centers. Silva and
his client regrouped. In September they won approval from the
zoning board to subdivide a portion of the lot for an
unspecified use. Concerned about an end-run around town
regulations, Town Councilman Charles J. Vaillancourt wants a
zoning amendment that would close that loophole and keep gas
stations separate from shopping centers. As of presstime, the
issue was unresolved, but Greenwood will make sure that
Middletown First stays in the thick of the fight for reasonable
development and an attractive community.
Al Norman, who started the national
anti-sprawl group Sprawl-Busters after blocking a Wal-Mart in
his Massachusetts hometown, calls Gail Greenwood “part
Ralph Nader, part cowgirl.”
“She is willing to do the research,
willing to take risks and willing to take on some pretty
well-established characters,” Norman says. “She
doesn’t care if the odds are stacked against her.
She’ll do what she thinks is right.” As for
Silva’s charge that Greenwood hired a petroleum industry
lawyer to further her agenda against freestanding gas stations,
Norman says: “You are hearing noises from an irritated
developer’s lawyer who for years has had free rein. These
people have had complete control over the development process
for years. The whole process has become a joke. When someone
like Gail sticks her nose in their affairs, they
squawk.”
Tanya Donelly, Greenwood’s former
Belly bandmate who now has a thriving solo career, applauds her
friend’s grassroots work in Middletown. “It
didn’t surprise me because I know how passionate and
well-rounded she is,” Donelly says. “She really
spreads that passion across her life in every aspect of it.
She’s very clear, very smart and very good at cutting
through the crap.”
Tossing back long, brown hair that’s
streaked with blond and purple, Greenwood laughs and calls to
Edith, one of her beloved — and vegetarian — dogs.
She knows she’s not alone in feeling that
Middletown’s charm could vanish like a Popsicle on a hot
sidewalk, and she’s filled with hope.
“I used to be an open space nazi, but
I understand that someone owns land and has a right to develop
it,” she says. “I also understand that the town is
trying to keep its retail development on West Main Road. We
just say, enough is enough. Look, I’m still punk rock
enough to go up against the Man to see what you’ve got.
It’s still fun. Besides, you sleep better.”
Portrait by Patrick O’Conner
Copyright 2003 Rhode Island Monthly
Communications, Inc.
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