Photo: Sgreenenharbor via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Drive Route 403 toward the bay in North Kingstown on a weekday morning and the traffic tells the story: Quonset Business Park, on the former Navy land at Quonset Point and Davisville, has become one of the largest concentrations of jobs in Rhode Island. The latest annual figures from the Quonset Development Corporation show a park that is still growing, and one that is running out of room to do it.
The numbers
According to QDC’s 2025 Annual Statutory Report, released in January, the 3,200-acre park is home to 267 companies employing 15,309 people. A companion economic impact assessment found that 9,881 of those jobs are in manufacturing, about a quarter of the state’s entire manufacturing workforce.
The assessment, which uses state labor data and standard economic multipliers, estimated that the park supports 29,455 jobs statewide once suppliers and spending by employees are counted, or 5.8% of Rhode Island’s total employment. Every 100 jobs at Quonset support another 92 elsewhere in the state, by the report’s estimate.
Pay is above the state average. The report put the average wage at the park at $78,076, about 20% higher than the statewide figure of $65,268. Businesses there paid $1.2 billion in direct payroll in 2025, and the park’s activity supported an estimated $191.5 million in state and local taxes, including $59 million in property taxes.
Direct employment has grown 34% since 2018, when the park counted 11,439 jobs. Since 2005, QDC says, 685 acres have been developed and 5.2 million square feet of new buildings added, drawing more than $2.5 billion in inflation-adjusted private investment.
Who runs it
QDC is a quasi-state agency and a subsidiary of the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation, created by the General Assembly in 2004 to develop and manage the park. Its board includes members appointed by the governor and by the host communities; North Kingstown appoints two seats and Jamestown and East Greenwich one each. Steven J. King is the managing director.
Land use follows a master plan the board first adopted in 2008 and last amended in 2019. QDC also owns the park’s drinking water system, much of which was originally installed by the Navy.
What is being built
Several large projects are reshaping the park:
- REGENT Craft, which opened its headquarters at Quonset in 2022, is leasing a new 255,000-square-foot plant to build all-electric passenger seagliders. QDC says the project is expected to create 300 jobs over 10 years and to be fully operational in 2026.
- Anduril Industries opened a factory for autonomous underwater vehicles in August 2025, with more than 100 new jobs expected.
- Edesia Nutrition, the nonprofit maker of the peanut-based therapeutic food Plumpy’Nut for malnourished children, is finishing an expansion of roughly 200,000 square feet that will double its capacity and add 50 jobs.
- General Dynamics Electric Boat added 30,000 square feet to its coating facility in July 2025 to support work on the Columbia-class submarines.
The park marked its 15,000th job in October 2025 at Hayward Industries, a pool-equipment manufacturer that has grown at Quonset since 2004. “An investment in Quonset is an investment that continues to pay dividends which will continue well into the future,” King said at the event, as quoted in coverage reprinted in QDC’s report.
The port and the railroad
The Port of Davisville remains one of North America’s top automobile import ports. North Atlantic Distribution, which operates there, processed 238,146 finished vehicles in 2025, most arriving by ship. The port logged 306 ship calls, 84 of them by offshore wind vessels, though QDC said auto imports slowed amid uncertainty over tariffs.
In September 2025 QDC opened the Terminal 5 Pier, the first new pier at Quonset in nearly 70 years, along with Blue Economy Support Docks for small marine businesses and researchers. Reconstruction of the more than 80-year-old Pier 1 is under way. The overall Port Master Plan calls for about $234.5 million in improvements and an estimated 1,100 port jobs.
On land, the park’s rail operator, Seaview Railroad, set a record in 2025 by hauling 8,626 rail cars.
The challenges ahead
QDC is candid that success has created its own problem. More than 95% of the park’s land is developed or in lease negotiations. About 21 acres of open land remain, split over four sites, with another 116 acres under negotiation, and few parcels can accommodate the 100,000-square-foot buildings that industrial manufacturers typically need.
Other pressures are financial. QDC said the U.S. Department of Transportation withdrew an $11.25 million port grant in 2025, and a roughly $15 million gap remains for a project to prepare about 40 acres of new cargo space. Testing has found elevated PFAS levels in the park’s drinking water system, and a system-wide treatment plant linking its three wells is estimated at $27.8 million.
Housing and getting to work
To help employers recruit, QDC is working with a development partner on about 140 apartments in the park’s Gateway District, with rents set around the median income of park employees and 10% of units designated affordable under state law. RIPTA realigned its Quonset Express route in 2025 to run nonstop from Providence and Woonsocket, and ridership rose, according to QDC.
Road access is also changing. Construction began in May 2025 on the state’s I-95 and Quonset ramps project, the so-called “Missing Move,” which will connect I-95 with Route 4.
For North Kingstown, the park is both a major employer and a constant planning question. With land nearly gone, the next chapter at Quonset is likely to be about building up, reusing older sites and making the jobs already there easier to reach.
