Main Street Vineyard Haven: Summer Report

Glasses clinked in Zephrus restaurant at the head of Main street Vineyard Haven last week as the town quietly made the transition from a place where alcohol was not sold to a place where you may now buy a beer or a glass of wine at a restaurant. Zephrus was the first to pour beer and wine with meals served, followed in quick succession by Saltwater, Blue Canoe, Waterside Market and the Black Dog. The queue before the selectmen for applications to obtain licenses is expected to continue in the weeks to come.

The change appears to be taking place smoothly and with a business-as-usual approach in the front of the house, which is a credit to the restaurant owners for their professionalism. This is a very big change for a business owner to take on smack in the middle of the summer hubbub; it involves extra staff training and many added logistics in the hectic business of running a restaurant, which the great Boston chef Jasper White once likened to putting on a dramatic performance every night of the week. And it is: you always have to be on, always be ready and at your best and the pressure is relentless.

For restaurant owners on the Vineyard there is the added pressure of having only a short summer season to make a profit to carry them through the rest of the year. And this of course can be said about every business on our resort Island.

Two years after the devastating fire that reduced the heart of Main street Vineyard Haven to charred rubble on the Fourth of July, the town is still in a state of recovery, and not just from the fire. The economic recession hit a number of Main street businesses this year, central among them Bowl and Board, which closed its doors after decades as an anchor there. The Bunch of Grapes Bookstore has been rebuilt and is again a thriving independent bookseller under new ownership. Next door Cafe Moxie remains in a partial state of reconstruction after the owner ran into problems with NStar and was unable to complete work before the summer. We hope that can be finished in the fall.

Meanwhile, Main street merchants are privately worried about so many missing teeth in the downtown smile this summer. This would be a good topic for the town business association to address, perhaps in a midsummer breakfast forum that includes the landlords who own the buildings on Main street. Landlords play a unique role in the complicated picture of changing storefronts on Main street; they set the rents and choose the tenants who occupy these storefronts. And they need to be involved in the conversation about making sure that Vineyard Haven remains a thriving, year-round center of commerce in the Island’s main port town. The sale of beer and wine in restaurants is expected to help but is only one small piece of the jagged puzzle.

It’s hard to have meetings in the summer when everyone is working long hours, but the subject should not wait until the fall.