When RIDC took ownership of Heppenstall Steel’s former 14-acre industrial site and adjacent lots in Lawrenceville more than 20 years ago, the community had all the markers of a blighted, economically depressed area: overgrown weeds, busted sidewalks, boarded storefronts, poverty and run-down housing stock. And spanning across several blocks were rusted, vacant steel mills and factories, painful reminders of bygone prosperity.
Lawrenceville was in dire need of investment and some kind of catalytic…