The first step of a three-phase master plan to build a new Martha’s Vineyard Community Services campus came before the Martha’s Vineyard Commission for a public hearing Thursday night.

In the first phase of the multi-year project, Community Services wants to build a 9,500-square-foot early childhood center and adjoining parking lot on property adjacent to the current campus off the Vineyard Haven-Edgartown Road in Oak Bluffs. Community Services leases its land from the regional high school and recently was granted permission to lease another 1.9 acres for the expansion.

The entire three-phase plan includes eventual demolition of the current campus and construction of a new, 17,500-square-foot, two-story main building to house administration, urgent care, counseling and disability services. Building square footage would increase by 58 per cent, from 19,278 to 30,482 square feet. As part of the plan, Community Services plans to add approximately 20 full-time employees and employ six fewer part-time workers. Parking would increase from 76 to 139 spots.

The West Tisbury building and architecture firm South Mountain Company is designing and building the project, which among other things is planned to be highly energy efficient.

At the hearing Thursday night, Community Services executive director Julie Fay said the social service organization, which dates back for some half a century on the Island, has been housed in its current facility since the 1980s. She cited frequent flooding, lack of space and traffic congestion as primary concerns.

Plan for a new campus would begin with a new early childhood center.

“This is a project that is sorely overdue for Community Services,” Ms. Fay told commissioners. “Our campus is really not a welcoming environment or conducive to the work we do there.”

South Mountain founder John Abrams added his remarks.

“This is going to be so unbelievably better than now,” he told the commission. “This is really a plan that makes something woefully inadequate, more than adequate.”

Community Services provides services for approximately 6,000 Islanders every year through six programs. It runs the only outpatient mental health clinic on the Island, offers substance use treatments, has the only nationally accredited child-care facility on the Island and sees more than 330 at-risk families every year through its program, the Island-Wide Youth Collaborative. It also offers 24-hour emergency services and urgent care facilities.

Community Services hopes to begin phase one in May with an approximate occupancy date of fall 2020. The target date for completing the full three-phase project is fall 2022.

After the presentation, commissioners praised the thoroughness of the plan.

“You guys have a great presentation. You guys have covered a lot of things,” said commissioner Ben Robinson from Tisbury. He was particularly enthusiastic about the commitment to a net-zero campus with enough solar production to offset use of the electric grid.

“You are at the vanguard of where things are going,” Mr. Robinson said.

Concerns about the plan include wastewater impacts (the property is in the Lagoon Pond watershed) and also traffic impacts on neighboring Woodside Village, an elderly housing complex that abuts the campus on the north. Both share the same entrance road; the road also acts as a secondary access for the YMCA. The road is 26 feet wide but wood chips and pine needles have obscured its edges by approximately two feet on either side.

A letter from Island Elderly Housing, the nonprofit that owns Woodside Village, expressed concerns about increased traffic from the project, cautioned against a VTA bus turnaround and asked to widen the shared access road.

“There are a lot of things the planning board likes about this application,” Oak Bluffs planning board member Ewell Hopkins said. “But we are really concerned about the lack of communication with abutters.”

Ms. Fay and Dorothy Young of IEH said they have been in conversation about the shared maintenance agreement for the road and issues pertaining to a potential bus turnaround. The site plan submitted to the commission shows a possible bus shelter but does not show the route.

Commissioners continued the public hearing to Feb. 21, asking Community Services to clarify the VTA transportation plan and maintenance agreement and fill in details about parking plans and egress locations on the site. They also want the applicant to lower the nitrogen load from wastewater so it falls within the commission’s designated limit for the Lagoon Pond watershed.