After hearing a brief presentation, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission voted last week to not review an expansion at Winnetu, the Katama hotel and spa owned by Mark Snider. The plans will now go to the Edgartown planning board for review at the town level.
Mr. Snider wants to replace existing offices, fitness and massage treatment rooms at 438 Katama Road with worker housing and new manager apartments. He told the commission Thursday that Winnetu will then move the fitness and massage treatment rooms to an addition located on the north side of the current hotel building. The addition will be adjacent to the inner courtyard and hidden from exterior view. All told, the expansion will add approximately 3,000 square feet of space.
Mr. Snider said the addition would not increase traffic on Mattakeset Way because it would be available only to current guests of the hotel. He also predicted that traffic would decrease on Dunes Road because guests and staff would no longer need to drive across the street to access the massage and fitness facilities.
Because the development will be out of the public view, the commission agreed that a hearing was not necessary.
The planning board meets on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. to consider the expansion.
In other business, the commission discussed two infrastructure projects related to traffic on the Island, including a federal grant to put in permanent, year-round traffic count stations. MVC traffic planner Dan Doyle said he has issued a request for proposal for firms to do design, maintenance and data collection on the new counters and as of Thursday had received three different choices.
“We got money to put the counters at five or six bellwether sites around the Island,” Mr. Doyle said. “We’re going to be able to tell a much clearer story about our data.” The commission currently uses temporary counters to gather Island traffic data. Permanent counters would allow them to supplement those numbers with year-round statistics.
Mr. Doyle also discussed a pilot program the commission has undertaken with a $100,000 state grant to subcontract engineering development plans to each Island town.
“This is a project to add technical capacity to towns, which miss out on funding when they can’t design improvement plans,” executive director Adam Turner said.
Towns have the option of retaining the services of the planners. Some examples of plans that could benefit from the program include improvements at the Aquinnah Circle and the Mill Brook bicycle spans, along with a drainage plan for the constantly-flooding Vineyard Haven-Edgartown Highway.
“We hope to show the projects’ utility to the towns,” Mr. Turner said. “We’re excited.”
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