Land Bank Looks to the Future After Forty Years

It was the 1980s, and Martha’s Vineyard was changing. Development had reached Island shores, and Vineyarders were concerned about its threat to the local ecology. They were concerned, too, about beauty. Land cordoned off by fences, left overgrown and unattended, was seen as hampering the Island’s bucolic character. And often, no one could use it.

While municipal boards could play defensive roles in the protection of the natural environment, the six Island towns determined more oversight was needed. So, in 1986, Islanders and the state legislature approved the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank, a new agency empowered by state legislation to acquire and maintain open conservation space for public enjoyment, using a 2 per cent transfer fee on most real estate purchases.

As the organization now celebrates its 40th anniversary, its reach is evident all over the Island, marked by its recognizable green and white signposts. The land bank has purchased 80 conservation properties that total about 4,200 acres, or about 7 per cent of the Island’s total land area. Some of these properties were slated to be developed before the land bank acquired them, while others had been closed to the public for decades. 

For James Lengyel, the executive director for all but three years of the land bank’s history, one of the key traits of the organization is that its focus has remained unchanged over the past four decades. 

“I think that one of the key strengths of the land bank is its faithfulness,” Mr. Lengyel said. “The philosophy has always been, environmental protection is the top goal, and the land bank characterizes public access as a very important but subordinate goal.”

But times, yet again, have changed. Fears of over-development that gave rise to the land bank remain, but mounting affordable housing concerns have prompted some to wonder whether it is possible to balance both preservation and development, and if so, what that balance looks like.

The story of the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank actually begins on Nantucket, in 1983, when residents there voted to establish a similar organization, the first of its kind in the U.S. 

Pam Goff, a Chilmark select board member at the time, remembers the neighboring island’s new project sparking discussion among Vineyarders, many of whom were eager to protect their Island from development.

“A number of us said, 'Well, why don’t we get one?'” she recalled.

Each town appointed a member for a land bank study committee to research how the prospect could play out on the Vineyard. Ms. Goff was the committee’s Chilmark appointee, and once the land bank was formally established, served as a commissioner until 2024. 

Ms. Goff remembers the beginnings of the land bank as an exciting time. But finding adequate support for the enterprise didn’t happen overnight.

For one, there was a fair amount of public anxiety. At a public land bank forum in February 1986, constituents and public officials wondered how the organization might impact property values, tax revenue and affordable housing.

“Under this land bank, I don’t see where my children will be able to buy land on this Island,” said David Araujo, then a member of the Tisbury select board, at the forum.

There were also other conservation groups with their own convictions about how things should be done.

“It was quite an exercise in consensus building,” Ms. Goff said of that period.

When the bill to establish the land bank passed, the land bank got to work, with two different executive directors taking the reins over the first few years. But Mr. Lengyel’s arrival in 1989, Ms. Goff said, was when everything started to click into place.

Much like the land bank itself, Mr. Lengyel took some time to cross the Nantucket Sound. His first job out of graduate school was with the Nantucket planning board, but then he saw an advertisement in the Gazette seeking a Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank executive director.

“What was exhilarating was that, relative to Nantucket, the Vineyard hadn’t done as much conservation planning,” he said. “The conservation groups were really creating a conservation network out of whole cloth.”

The land bank’s first purchase was the Christiantown Woods Preserve in 1986. Since then, it’s made several big acquisitions, including Sepiessa Point Reservation, which conserves almost 11,000 feet of Tisbury Great Pond shoreline, 190 acres of Oak Bluffs woodlands that was eyed for a golf course, Pimpneymouse Farm on Chappaquiddick and Red Gate Farm, the $27 million, 323-acre Aquinnah property that belonged to former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. 

“Everyone I go there with says, ‘I’ve never seen anything like this,’” Tisbury land bank commissioner Nancy Weaver said of Red Gate Farm, now Squibnocket Pond Reservation. “And the reason you haven’t, is it’s always been private.”

While many cherish the land bank’s contributions to Island life, for some the issue of affordable housing, which increasingly impacts every aspect of Island living, has raised the question of how much conservation is too much.

In a 2022 Gazette letter to the editor titled Time to Rethink the Land Bank, Island realtor James Joyce questioned whether the Island could afford to lose any more tax revenue to nontaxable conservation land.

“The land bank is a powerful organization with a huge pool of money,” he wrote. “Are we at the tipping point of enough conserved land for conservation?”

In a recent interview, Mr. Joyce said his view hasn’t changed. 

“My primary issue is them not paying taxes and taking land permanently off our tax rolls that could be used for housing or… more commercial space,” he said.

Mr. Lengyel said it is land bank policy to examine every property it plans to acquire to see if there’s potential for affordable housing. Not all property is conservation-worthy, he added, and often is best suited to other uses, including housing for land bank employees and year-round Islanders.

“It’s been positive and very fruitful,” he said of the land bank’s affordable housing efforts.

These efforts reach back to 1988, when the land bank acquired the Tisbury Meadow Preserve and the Mai Fane House for three staff members, one year-round and two seasonal. But what many see as the land bank’s first major affordable housing venture would come three years later at Sepiessa, where the land bank and the Dukes County Housing Authority purchased the land and built seven affordable rental units there.

Ann Wallace, chair of the Dukes County Housing Authority board of directors, said she values the organization’s ongoing partnership with the land bank.

“It’s always the juggle between preserving properties and creating more housing,” she told the Gazette. “That struggle, that tug, is what we all try and figure out.”

In 2004, the land bank partnered for the first time with Island Housing Trust (IHT), then known as the Island Housing Trust Corporation, to purchase land off Takemmy Path in Tisbury for affordable housing. Since then, the two groups have collaborated on a number of projects. The last was in 2023, when the land bank purchased surplus land from IHT to help fund the Smalley’s Knoll neighborhood in Aquinnah.

According to IHT executive director Philippe Jordi, this kind of arrangement is what’s known as conservation-based affordable housing.  

“It’s a pretty well-known land use approach…” he said. “The reality is, you do what you can with what you have,”

While he sees the land bank as an important partner, he also feels there is an imbalance on the Island between conservation and affordable housing. To him, conservation-based affordable housing is one way to offset that balance. He also is in support of ongoing efforts to start a Vineyard housing bank, based on the land bank’s enabling legislation.

“The land bank has done a tremendous job, but we need to balance that too,” he said.

For others, the land bank’s acquisitive nature does not take into account the deep history of the Island’s Indigenous population.

Kristina Hook, an elder from the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), said the land bank’s efforts to purchase and conserve land feel boundless and encroaching, and echoes the past 400 years of colonialism that have pushed her and her ancestors to the outskirts of their ancestral lands.

“It’s not comfortable for me,” she said. “It’s not comfortable for a lot of my tribal family.”

Part of a solution, she said, could involve the organization making an effort to return land to the tribe, or provide financial support. But what she really wants is communication, and for that communication to be focused on repairing what she sees as a lack of respect for tribal sovereignty.

“I’m not asking that the land bank cease or [saying] any of their goals are necessarily wrong, that’s not what I’m saying at all…” she said. “I do feel the land bank itself needs to sit down with the tribe. That would be my dream.”

Mr. Lengyel said the land bank does consult with the Massachusetts Historical Commission to see if there is any known tribal history on properties they acquire. And as the land bank works on a cross-Aquinnah trail, he said its ecologist has been working with tribal historian Bettina Washington to put down markers indicating tribal history, including at tribal homesteads.

“The land bank’s law and its approach is that the land bank lands belong to everybody,” he said. “We want everybody to enjoy the properties.”

The enjoyment comes with a price, however, as even the land bank must contend with the Vineyard’s sky high real estate market. Though Mr. Lengyel said the land bank is in healthy financial standing, he also said that the 2 per cent fee is ultimately insufficient to accomplish all the organization wishes it could do.

For fiscal year 2025, the land bank brought in $15.38 million in revenue. Revenue is used to purchase properties, maintain the properties that exist and pay staff. It is also used to pay debt service, which represents $9.6 million of the 2026 budget, or 68 per cent.

“All of these sensational properties were not able to be purchased in cash,” Mr. Lengyel said.

When the question of how much conservation land does Martha’s Vineyard need comes up, Mr. Lengyel is guided by the statute Islanders passed 40 years ago.

“On the subject of [when] enough is enough, that’s a political determination,” he said. “The voters will tell us. In the meantime, the land bank will enthusiastically pursue as much of this beautiful Island as it can.”

For Edgartown land bank commissioner Steve Ewing, the land bank has been crucial to his attachment to the Island. Mr. Ewing has served on the land bank for a handful of years, but he’s a lifelong Islander and has been watching the organization in action since its birth.

“I remember petitioning, going out and getting signatures to get people to vote for the land bank,” he said.

For him, the land bank has been a lifeline, connecting him back to the open fields and berry-picking days of his youth on the Island. He hopes Martha’s Vineyard is an accessible place to live for future generations of Islanders who can enjoy the land, too.

“Without the land bank, even though I’ve got deep roots here, I don’t know if I’d still live here,” he said.

This article appears in July 31, 2026.