Save Wicks Nursery Campaign Launched!

The Aquidneck Land Trust (“ALT”) and the Wicks family are extremely pleased to announce that they have reached agreement to provide ALT with an opportunity to save the Wicks Nursery on Moitoza Lane in Portsmouth, Rhode Island from development.  Today, the parties signed an Option Agreement that will give ALT nine months to raise the necessary monies to purchase a $2 million perpetual Conservation Easement on almost 40 acres of the farm. ALT is the only nationally accredited non-profit land trust in Rhode Island.

A Conservation Easement is a perpetual legal agreement between a landowner and a qualified organization, such as ALT, that restricts future activities on a parcel so as to protect the property’s conservation values (wildlife habitat, important agricultural soils, scenic vistas, etc.) while also allowing the landowner to continue owning and using the land for permitted open space purposes.  

Wicks Nursery has been under constant development threats the last few years, including a proposal in 2008 to convert the farm into an 108-lot subdivision that would have put immense pressures on Aquidneck Island’s already burdened infrastructure and limited natural resources in the form of increased traffic and air quality degradation, public school demands, trash and waste disposal issues, storm water runoff problems, etc.  The Option Agreement was reached despite new development offers this year.

The Wicks Nursery is very important and strategic from a conservation perspective.  As shown on the map below, the property is contiguous with a number of other previously conserved parcels within ALT’s Center Island Greenway thereby building upon and enhancing this past conservation work.  The parcel is also the last major undeveloped and unprotected property within the Sisson Pond Watershed.  This open space land provides a natural buffer that helps protect this important Aquidneck Island water reservoir from harmful runoff.  The subject land has been actively farmed for generations and is located next to other agricultural lands, many of which are conserved, thereby ensuring a critical mass of arable land in this area to sustain agricultural activities into the future.  The property primarily contains Prime Farmland Soils as recognized by the United States Department of Agriculture.