In just the last ten days, pieces of what could become a comprehensive plan have begun to take shape for the stretch of Edgartown-Vineyard Haven road dominated on one side by the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School and on the other by various community organizations.

First Martha’s Vineyard Community Services appeared last week before a school board subcommittee to describe a thoughtful proposal to create a new campus next door and reconfigure its existing one for transitional housing for teachers and other professionals.

This week the YMCA and the Martha’s Vineyard Arena announced a cooperative agreement that could lead to better integration of those two facilities as the ice rink gets ready to launch a major reconstruction project.

Combined with the creation of a home for the Islandwide Youth Collaborative last fall and a planned renovation of the Martha’s Vineyard Skate Park, these initiatives advance the concept of Youth Town, a handle coined by MVYouth, the philanthropic group that helped fund the latter two efforts, to describe a centrally located cluster of activities and services serving the Island’s children.

Except for the ice rink, which was deeded its own land by the high school some forty years ago, all of the property in question — some fifty acres in total — is owned by the regional high school, which surely has needs of its own. Years of postponed capital investment has left the secondary school building itself in dire need of repairs. And the school superintendent’s office should logically be relocated there from the unsuitable building it now occupies in Vineyard Haven.

What is needed now is a true master plan that places the several initiatives underway, proposed and clearly required in the context of what Youth Town — for lack of a better handle — could and should look like in the next ten, fifteen and twenty five years, and how it might be staged.

While school property needs to be at the center of such a plan, this is also an opportunity to bring others in to revisit use of surrounding land, much of it owned by the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank, for compatible purposes, including affordable housing.

Sometimes it just takes someone to call the meeting.