Developer Reid (Sam) Dunn has built a fence and wall on his Stone Bank condominium property that were not included in the project originally approved by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, MVC staff said this week.
These changes, as well as a proposed fence dividing the development’s courtyard, call for a modification review before the full commission, the commision's land use planning committee determined at its meeting Monday night.
It will be the fifth modification of the prominent Vineyard Haven project since it received its original MVC approval in the spring of 2021.
“You didn’t build what you said you would build,” MVC executive director Adam Turner told Mr. Dunn Monday.
“Everything that comes in to us is not quite what we approved,” Mr. Turner added. “The building inspector has the same problem.”
The six-foot-high fence and wall are both built flush to the ground, adjacent to the foundation of the condominium building that is closest to the Tisbury municipal parking lot and Vineyard Transit Authority bus shelters.
“There’s been a terrible problem in that area for vagrancy, drugs and homeless people," Mr. Dunn said. “It’s been used as a dumping ground. People have been sleeping on the property and it needs to be secured."
But the barriers potentially could block the flow of stormwater in the area, said Rich Saltzberg, the commission’s coordinator for developments of regional impact (DRIs).
Chairing Monday’s committee discussion, commissioner Fred Hancock favored an independent stormwater study before the modification review, a measure staff also recommended.
Committee members brushed aside Mr. Dunn’s assertion that he followed the proper building codes when putting up the fence and wall.
“This is strictly about whether it was constructed as presented to us, and the fact that it wasn’t means that we need to approve the modification, and in order to do that we would like to find out what all the ramifications are of the project being built in this way,” Mr. Hancock said.
The committee agreed to commission the stormwater study and ask the full commission to open a modification hearing at its June 22 meeting.
There are other ways in which Mr. Dunn is out of compliance with his MVC approval, Mr. Saltzberg said, but the committee ran out of time Monday to review them.
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