Choying Rangdol was waiting for his ferry in Woods Hole on a recent Friday when he turned his gaze towards the water.
Instead of seeing his ferry pull into the slip, the Oak Bluffs business owner looked over at men in hardhats walking along the top of a building shell located right in the middle of the Steamship Authority’s terminal property.
It will be a familiar sight for the hundreds of thousands of travelers who come to and from Martha’s Vineyard this summer. The Steamship Authority is in the homestretch of building a new, $32 million terminal and utility building in Woods Hole, capping off more than a decade of planning and construction.
For the first time since the project started, the construction will continue through the busy season, forcing a game of musical chairs for the passengers and motorists coming on and off the ferries.
“Right now, it’s confusing,” Mr. Rangdol said. “But in the process, that happens.”
The outlines of the new terminal have started to come into shape. As of earlier this month, walls had been built for the 5,418-square foot building, the initial stage of the foundation was laid, and workers put nail guns to the roof after the tongue-and-groove decking had been completed.
Plans for a new terminal weren’t actually based on a desire for a new terminal. The Steamship Authority started to consider building a new terminal ahead of a feasibility study in 2012, when the ferry line was facing the need to overhaul the ferry slips.
During a tour of the construction with the Gazette earlier this month, Steamship general manager Robert Davis said the old white cinderblock terminal that used to be located along the waterfront until it was demolished in 2018 would have never survived the pile driving for the new slips, forcing the Steamship to look at options for a new ticket building.
“The terminal building had to come down because it wouldn’t take the stress that was going to be caused by the pile driving,” Mr. Davis said.
Settling on a design for the new building proved to be a monumental task. The Steamship Authority ran through more than 20 different schematics before landing on the one-level terminal of stone and glass that is being erected.
Woods Hole residents rebelled against the initial design — a three-story building fashioned after the Candle House building at the nearby Marine Biological Laboratory. Some likened the proposed terminal to an Aspen ski lodge that blocked views because it was too tall for the location.
After going back to the drawing board, the Steamship picked the current design, which splits the building in two, putting the utilities for the terminal in a separate building near the entrance and exit road.
Islanders have long grumbled about the project, and those complaints grew louder as construction started and inconveniences for ferry riders increased. During Memorial Day Weekend, one of the busiest travel weekends of the year, several crossings were cancelled due to high winds. This caused an overflow of vehicles in the Woods Hole lot, with lines backed up onto Woods Hole Road.
Steamship officials acknowledged the problem and are working on ways to ward off future backups. Potential solutions include hiring more traffic control staff to guide drivers once they get onto the terminal property, as well as staging vehicles at one of the parking lots in Falmouth or even Bourne if several boats are cancelled.
“We continue to learn how we can improve,” Mr. Davis said.
But the issue has raised concerns for the Steamship board of governors. At the board meeting last week, Falmouth representative Peter Jeffrey raised the prospect of construction coming to a halt in the summer. Mr. Jeffrey called the traffic in Woods Hole an “abomination” and said it was a wonder that no one had been hurt at the now joint terminal-construction site.
“We’re lucky we haven’t had an accident yet involving a car or a pedestrian or construction vehicle on that site,” he said.
He floated the potential of stopping construction from July 1 through Labor Day.
“Whatever we’re doing doesn’t seem to be working correctly,” he said.
The board took no action on the suggestion and Mr. Davis said that a stoppage wouldn’t do much for the traveling public, other than prolong the length of the project.
“The work zone would remain so we wouldn’t be picking anything up by pausing the construction at this stage,” he said.
But aside from plans to pour concrete, the Steamship Authority is limiting work during the summer months to only the interiors of the building so no major equipment will be on site as tourists try to make their way to the ferries. This strategy of continuing at least some of the project during the summer would shorten the overall construction of the project by a year and a half, according to Mr. Davis.
Steamship staff hope to complete the utility building by December and the terminal building by next Memorial Day.
When the terminal is finished, the flow of vehicles to the ferry will mirror the current model.
Vehicles headed to the Vineyard will line up behind the new terminal building, and drive around the terminal — either to the left or right — depending on which of the three slips their ferry is in. Buses will park in a lane to the back of the terminal.
The location of the new terminal, as well as the need for something new at all, has been the cause of consternation on the Vineyard. A common refrain has been to just continue using the temporary ticket building at the back of the Steamship lot.
“The most prevalent opinion from the public is that the ticket building wasn’t even needed,” the steering committee of the new Steamship Authority citizen’s action group, which formed to push for changes at the ferry line, recently wrote to the Gazette. “The temporary ticket building, which has served the public for the past seven years, simply needed a bit more seating, especially with increased modern reliance on e-ticketing, to be reinforced to last, and to be raised to meet floodplain requirements.”
But, as Mr. Davis has said in the past, the Steamship is legally only allowed to use the temporary building while it builds the new one. A permanent building would have to meet more stringent standards for flooding and storm proofing, he said.
“It was sufficient during construction, but for a long-term solution, it’s not,” he said. “It’s not a full option.”
During a tour of the construction with the Gazette, Mr. Davis said the location of the new terminal in the middle of the property was picked out of convenience for travelers.
“The engineers had originally wanted the terminal building to be back in this area,” Mr. Davis said, gesturing to the back of the property. “But the Falmouth board member and the Vineyard board member voiced concerns over the distance that people were going to be going from the terminal building to the slips.”
After a subsequent study, the Steamship realized the central site would be the best location to withstand any future flooding in the area.
“When we did the flood study afterwards, it turns out that was the last site on the property that would be flooded,” Mr. Davis said.
Though there are many detractors, Janet MacCallum, a Falmouth homeowner, came down to the village to take in a summer’s day and see the work. She used to work at the Landfall restaurant and was well-aware of the congestion that can ensue during the summer.
As Ms. MacCallum watched boats come and go, she said she was impressed.
“Hats off to the Steamship Authority,” she said. “They seem to do a really good job…They keep expanding as needed. I’m pleased with them.”
The project will be one of the last major initiatives in Mr. Davis’ tenure, along with bringing on a third new freight ferry — the M/V Monomoy. He is set to step down as general manager in October, but will stay on in an advisory capacity.
“We’ve never been in a position where we’ve been bringing three new boats online, and rebuilding a terminal,” Mr. Davis said. “...These projects take some time, but at the end, we’re designing these to improve our operations; it’d be irresponsible for us not to take into account that we need to have facilities that are safe.”
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