The continuing clash over redevelopment of a demolished house in Vineyard Haven reached the Martha’s Vineyard Commission last week, in a public hearing that ran well over three hours and remains to be deliberated.

Neighbors of the 97 Spring street property have been crying foul for months, saying Tisbury building inspector Gregory Monka should not have issued a permit to owner Xerxes Aghassipour and that Mr. Aghassipour’s plan for workforce housing will lower their quality of life. The project entails a construction of a nine-bedroom, single-family home, potentially used for housing workers. 

“We implore the commission to please take this on for review,” said next-door neighbor Bernadette Cormie, who previously appealed the project to the Tisbury zoning board of appeals without success.

The Tisbury planning board has taken the neighbors’ side, while the zoning board of appeals has upheld Mr. Monka, who considers the redevelopment a single-family dwelling under town zoning bylaws.

Martha’s Vineyard Commission executive director Adam Turner last month declined to review the Spring street project, writing in a letter that the project did not meet commission standards for a development of regional impact (DRI).

The planning board and Tisbury’s board of health then jointly asked the commission to use its own discretion in accepting the project as a DRI. The commission at its meeting Thursday was considering that request.

“Our focus is to determine not the individual merits of the particular project, but whether this project has regional impact — in other words, it would affect more than one town,” commission chair Fred Hancock said at the outset of the Oct. 24 hearing.

“Should that be the case, then it would be treated like a normal DRI referral. So it would be going back to square one,” Mr. Hancock said.

Uniquely, the hearing saw Tisbury planning board member Ben Robinson — who also sits on the MVC — appearing with the board to call for an action he intends to vote on as a commissioner.

Mr. Robinson said he consulted the state ethics commission regarding his participation as both advocate and decision-maker.

“Their advice back to me was that [I] have the ability to both sit on this side of the table as a presenter under my Tisbury planning board hat, and also sit on the Martha’s Vineyard Commission side of the table to deliberate and vote on this,” he said.

Ms. Cormie and planning board chair Connie Alexander told commissioners that there is evidence the original four-bedroom house, which was torn down early this year and replaced by a larger residence with nine bedroom-bathroom suites, was older than the 99 years given in town records.

“We were able to locate further documentation which … clearly shows the house to be in the vicinity of 120 years old,” Ms. Alexander said.

Given its age, she said, the house should have been reviewed under the MVC’s demolition policy applying to structures older than 100.

Ms. Alexander and Mr. Robinson said the redevelopment also has regional impact because it’s located in a neighborhood of mostly longtime, year-round Islanders.

“This was basically a working-class neighborhood in the early 1900s and it’s still that same working-class neighborhood today,” Mr. Robinson said.

The neighborhood also has 14 short-term rentals, noted Mr. Aghassipour, who told the commission he followed proper procedures when applying for permits and has only done what he has the right to do under town zoning bylaws.

The newly-built house has more square feet of living space than others in the neighborhood, but that’s largely due to the finished attic and basement levels, he said.

Mr. Aghassipour, who had envisioned leasing the nine-suite house to Vineyard Wind 1 for employee housing, told commissioners he’ll make the final decision based on what Tisbury officials require for a certificate of occupancy.

“It’s a nice build and very applicable for a large family. We will make a determination at certificate of occupancy [and] if it is only a certain thing that’s allowed, we’re going to follow the rules,” he said.

Mr. Aghassipour owns houses in multiple Island towns that he leases to large employers like Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. 

Vineyard Wind is already housing workers in his five-unit property at 52 William street, with no neighborhood disruptions, Mr. Aghassipour said. 

“They’re mariners. They spend their whole day out in the ocean, and they come back, and I guess it must be pretty tiring that they crash. These are not people that are partying,” he said.

But neighbors of the Spring street house, just 300 yards away, have organized against the prospect of more workforce housing. 

Signs reading “Save Our Neighborhoods” have appeared on many lawns in town and Ms. Cormie now is running for a seat on the Martha’s Vineyard Commission.

Tisbury planning board administrator Amy Upton, of West Tisbury, also is running for MVC on the current ballot.

Ms. Upton became a part of the Spring street dispute after Mr. Aghassipour, through a public records request, obtained emails and texts he said indicated she and Mr. Robinson had an improper bias against his project. The documents now form part of the MVC’s written record on 97 Spring street.

While Ms. Upton did not take part in last week’s public hearing, Tisbury resident Casey Dobel identified herself as her attorney during an emotional speech.

“We have somebody who is using abusive FOIA requests in an attempt to discredit a valued member of the community, just in an attempt to say that the planning board is against him,” said Ms. Dobel, who also called for the MVC to take up the Spring street project.

“When we’re talking about regional impact, we’re talking about what our Island is going to look like, and what we are willing to permit when it comes to the destruction of historic houses and the creation of essentially transient housing,” she said.

Following the public hearing, commissioners agreed to accept written testimony until 5 p.m. Oct. 31, after which they will set a date to deliberate on the referral.