Walter B. Mahony III – Planning Commission
Walter “Peter” is a current member of the Planning Commission and an award-winning professional planner, whose university training and entire vocational career has been focused on the sustainable balance between development and land preservation. With architectural and planning degrees from Princeton and Cambridge Universities, project management experience coordinating the work of interdisciplinary teams, federal, state and local agencies, as well as community advisory and civic groups, and a 40 year career in planning and landscape design, Walter is exceptionally well qualified to serve on the Planning Commission in Charlestown.
Walter has lived here full time for 10 years, but he has a long history in Charlestown. His maternal grandmother arrived here in 1905, and Walter has spent summers in Charlestown since he was 3 years old. Over those years he has witnessed and then participated in various struggles to preserve our town’s unique character and natural assets beginning with the defeat of the nuclear power plant proposed for our town in the late 1970s.
Education
- MFA, Urban Planning, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
- BA, Architecture, Cambridge University, Cambridge, England
- BA, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
- AICP (American Institute of Certified Planners) designation
Professional Experience
- Professional Planner with Vollmer Associates (now Stantec Consulting), New York, NY
- Professional Planner with Conklin & Rossant, Architects and Planners, New York, NY
- Associate Member, American Institute of Architects
- Member, Society of American Military Engineers; member, American Planning Association; and member, Urban Land Institute
Public Service
- Charlestown Planning Commission 2020 – present
- Adjunct Professor, Pratt Institute, Department of Urban Design and City Planning, Brooklyn, NY
- Member of design juries at Pratt Institute and Princeton, Columbia, and Yale Universities
- Pro-bono design services for community boards and various park conservancies in New York City
- Testimony on various land use issues in Charlestown, including barrier beach preservation, aquaculture, historic register designations, waterfront access easements, land trust acquisitions, salt pond water-quality issues, retail development, regional power, and water supply
Personal
RI law requires his name appear on the ballot as Walter, but his friends know him as Peter. Walter is a family name, the name of his father and grandfather; but from birth his family called him Peter, and we know him as Peter too! Peter has always found Charlestown to be the perfect antidote to his fast-paced life in New York City. Reflecting on his lifetime of experiences in Charlestown, Peter says, “I have watched Charlestown grow from a small hamlet of Perry Browning’s General Store, Leon Grinnell’s gas station and Henry Mook’s one-room post office to a thriving community that respects its unique environmental setting of salt ponds, barrier beaches, wooded uplands and Wild and Scenic Pawcatuck River.”
