Enterprising uses suggested for dome
The dome is still without a home, but that’s not for a lack of trying.
Even before the state’s only geodesic dome, or “Bucky Ball” so named for its inventor, Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller, was removed from Airport Road, Norman Cook was searching for a place to resurrect it. He’s suggested numerous uses to just about anyone who would listen. His suggestions ranged from Roger Williams Zoo, as protection for the elephants, to a covering for the horse ring at Goddard Park and covering for outdoor concerts or sporting events at one of the state institutions of higher learning. He’s thought it could be enclosed as a botanical garden or even cut in half as a concert shell.
Cook mounted a campaign to save the dome more than two years ago when Enterprise Rent A Car gained city approvals for a regional car operation that comprised of leasing state airport property along with private property. The plan was to level state buildings on the site as well as the dome that at one time had been used for the storage of airport maintenance trucks and plows. It was erected in 1962.
When Cook, who is an engineer and designer and teaches an architecture class at CCRI, learned of the plan he mounted a campaign to save what he considered a historic structure. He teamed up with Bob Corio of Robert Corio Designs in Johnston. They met with the Rhode Island Airport Corporation and an agreement was reached whereby they could remove the dome at their expense.
According to the temporary access and structure removal agreement, Corio would disassemble the dome, remove it from the site and reassemble it at a new location for “a public use and/or display.”
Also under the terms, Dome Restoration, LLC, the company Corio has formed, would offer the dome to Rhode Island cities and towns “and other suitable public or not-for-profit entities.” He hasn’t found any takers.
Under what was then a tight deadline, assuming that work on the Enterprise plan would begin, Corio’s people dismantled the dome, removing one aluminum panel at a time.
Cook is delighted to have the dome saved from the scrap metal heap and its potential conversion into soda and beer cans.
The irony is that, while the dome is in pieces in storage, its removal is the only thing that has occurred on the site other than the erection of a fence and some excavation by the Warwick Sewer Authority for pipe repairs. The concrete and steel stanchions that once supported the dome stand like a distorted Stonehenge.
K. Joseph Shekarchi, who represented Enterprise at city hearings, said the company’s plan ended up being too costly and has since been abandoned. At this point, the airport has no known plans for use of the site.
Cook said Corio owns the dome and conceivably could erect it on his property. But that doesn’t appear to be the long-range goal. Rather, Cook holds out hope he can find a use and a home for it that keeps the dome in the public view, if not public use.
