The kitchen opens a skylight-topped dining area.
Realty Plans
Rhode Island
Graduation ceremony held for Rhode Island Department of Corrections Training Academy
EAST GREENWICH, R.I. (WJAR) — A graduation ceremony was held for the Rhode Island Department of Corrections Training Academy graduates on Tuesday.
According to officials, the ceremony for academy class 94 was held at Camp Fogarty’s Joint Force Headquarters Auditorium in East Greenwich at 10:30 a.m.
According to officials, the ceremony for academy class 94 was held at Camp Fogarty’s Joint Force Headquarters Auditorium in East Greenwich at 10:30 a.m. (WJAR)
Multiple awards were given out during the event.
“I know firsthand what it takes to earn this badge. The discipline, the sacrifice, the long hours and the integrity required when no one’s watching. Correction work is not just a job- it’s a calling that demands strength, accountability and character every single day,” Tiffini Isom, deputy warden of the training academy, said. “It is with confidence and pride that I say that you are ready to be signed off on today and move forward as correctional officers.”
Rhode Island
A Rhode Island Condo in Taylor Swift’s Neighborhood Just Sold for a Record $18.5 Million
Rhode Island‘s Watch Hill community is historically known as a summer resort with grand Victorian-era summer cottages built by wealthy families. These days, the seaside enclave is best known for having Taylor Swift as one of its most famous homeowners.
Set within the coastal village’s storied Ocean House—and just a few doors down from Swift’s estate, a penthouse has sold for $18.5 million, making it the most expensive condo sale ever recorded in the state. The deal is also Rhode Island’s biggest residential sale of 2026 so far, edging out a $16 million Newport estate that sold in January.
The new owner is Alexander Clark, founder and CEO of Technolutions, the New Haven company behind Slate, a college admissions platform used by more than 2,000 colleges and universities. A Yale graduate, Clark has also been involved in historic preservation and philanthropic efforts around New Haven. He purchased the penthouse with his partner, Kimberly Pedrick.
This $36 Million Residence on Miami’s Fisher Island Merged Two Condos Into One Sprawling Home
The apartment, the resort’s only penthouse, spans nearly 4,600 square feet, with two living rooms, a formal dining room, a den, and a skylight-topped kitchen with a large island and pantry. Designed for outdoor living, the nearly 2,200-square-foot terrace includes an outdoor kitchen and grill, lounge area, bathroom, and gazebo, with views of the Atlantic Ocean and Little Narragansett Bay.
The rooftop terrace offers unobstructed ocean views.
Realty Plans
The primary suite’s bath includes a deep soaking tub and a beach-stone shower, while the two guest bedrooms each have their own en-suite bathrooms.
Ownership includes membership to the Ocean House Club, giving residents access to the resort’s Ocean Beach and the Dune Cottage, as well as a members-only club room, lap pool, fitness center, spa, wine cellar, and tasting room.
You Can Become Taylor Swift’s Neighbor at This $23.5 Million Rhode Island Estate
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Built in 1868, Ocean House was the backdrop for Douglas Fairbanks’s 1916 film American Aristocracy.
Realty Plans
The penthouse first listed in February and went under contract in July, closing this month. Bill Hecker of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New England Properties represented both the buyer and seller. At $18.5 million, the sale is also the fourth-highest residential transaction in Rhode Island since 2021, regardless of property type. “We had multiple offers on this property, which tells you how competitive this segment of the coastal market has gotten,” Hecker says.
Swift’s 11,700-square-foot estate is known as High Watch. She bought the property in 2013 for $17.75 million. Its former owner, heiress Rebekah Harkness, later became the subject of Swift’s 2020 song “The Last Great American Dynasty” and the singer held her star-studded bachelorette party there in June 2026.
Click here to see more photos of the Rhode Island condo.
Realty Plans
Authors
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Abby Montanez
Work on the first homes started 10 years ago
BURRILLVILLE – Walking up George Eddy Road, the first homes look the most lived in and the most landscaped – adorned with fences and vehicles, above-ground pools and gardens and, in front of one house, xeriscaped rocks.
Further up, the yards slowly cede to lawns, while the trees along the street look to all be about the same height, planted at the same time.
At the end of the road, a cul-de-sac, the homes look the freshest, which they are, having only recently been completed.
Unlike almost all other new homes built in the state, this 30-house subdivision dubbed “Fernwood” was built by the hands of its new owners, funded partially through a federal grant that required “sweat equity.”
The first phase started 10 years ago in 2016, while the last finished this summer, followed by a ceremonial ribbon cutting at the end of July. The project; however, dates back much further, to 2003, with the purchase of 228 acres with a land bank loan from RIHousing, NeighborWorks Blackstone River Valley Executive Director Joe Garlick said.
How neighbors came together to build their own homes
At Mike Scurka’s two-story house, most the furniture was scored off of Facebook Marketplace, including a couch and a big dining room table. A beautiful slab of wood on a former Singer sewing machine stand, he it made himself, with help from his dad.
“We were driving around, we found that slab of wood on the road for sale,” he said. “So I just sanded it down, lacquered it up, screwed it right in.”
Inside, the walls are yellow.
“I thought, compared to some of the other houses, it’s nice and bright,” Scurka said.
The “sweat equity” house building program means the people building the houses are doing most of it themselves, but also, they’re doing it as a group. Scurka quickly found his niche was installing drywall and siding, while another person in the cohort is a professional house painter and painted all the houses.
“You kind of get a really good idea what it’s going to look like when it’s all finished up,” Scurka said of being the drywall guy. “I think probably what I struggled with the most was installing the doors. There’s so much to, you know, keep plumb and straight. You also have to jam it up so it looks nice.”
“It’s very complicated, but I was really proud of that,” Scurka said, handling the door.
Like most people, Scurka didn’t have background in construction. While his dad had tips for him, he “came in blind.”
“Now I’m coming out like, you know, I see little problems and I want to be able to fix them. And I totally can now,” he said. “It was absolutely the hardest thing I’ve done for like two years of no time off.”
Each week, everyone put in 30 to 40 hours worth of work toward getting the homes built, come rain or shine or freezing weather, although the record-setting blizzard put a dent in work for a few weeks.
Each house has to be done exactly to plan until each one in the group is done. Once they are turned over to the new owners, with mortgages between 1% and 4%, the changes to the house can begin.
For Scurka, the only desired change is the placement of the light switches in the living room and kitchen – where there should be two for each, there is only one.
The steep learning curve
The initial, base grant for the project came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s “self-help housing” program, the first use of it in Rhode Island in 35 years. (The projects are much more common in the Southwest, including in Arizona and New Mexico).
The USDA grants only covered a portion of the funds needed to build the houses, and the amount needed only grew each year, especially in the last few years, as the cost of building materials went up and up and up.
An architect drew up the designs for the first houses for the group and most of the families chose the biggest design, with three stories. That first group of seven houses took a little over two years before they were all built and ready to be lived in.
After that, they scaled back the designs, and made them shorter, to make them “more sweat equity friendly.”
“The ladders, the roof, those were the scary ones,” Garlick said. “And the siding.”
Reducing the size of the buildings meant less time people spent trying to put a roof or siding on a building three stories up and it also meant less house to build.
How did we get here?
The original 223 acres purchased turned into the 30-unit Fernwood development as well as an income-restricted apartment complex called Greenridge, with 95 units. In between the two is woods, with walking paths that connect them.
“These things always take longer than we want,” Garlick said. “It’s a large parcel, it’s complicated because there are wetlands there and environmental issues. It was built on a relationship with the town, as we worked with them, and then, it was assembling the financing.”
While the first batch of houses took two years to build, and the subsequent phases took less time, NeighborWorks Blackstone River Valley still had to get funding each year for the next round of houses and state funding only opens once a year.
What’s next?
After the initial headaches that came with the first phase of the project in 2016 (and the panic of finding extra funding to cover pandemic and post-pandemic price increases), everything became relatively streamlined. Get slabs poured, get a good group of people and they build the houses with lots of help and instruction, sometimes from their fellow neighbors.
While Fernwood may be done, the families moved in, the houses built, the trees slowly growing, Garlick said they are not done. The plan is to find land for a new project, in the rural part of the state, for a new subidivision.
“That site is great because you have grocery, medical offices and we were trying to channel Scott Wolf and smart growth,” Garlick said. “We don’t want to stick development in the middle of nowhere, while this development is close to a robust village.”
With recent changes to zoning rules, it should make it an easier lift, depending on the town.
NARRAGANSETT, R.I. (WJAR) — Beachgoers at Narragansett Town Beach were forced out of the water after a shark sighting Thursday afternoon.
The Department of Environmental Management said a shark was spotted around 3:30 p.m.
People were seen on shore looking for the shark.
Experts have not shared what kind of shark it was.
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