A smiling sandy-haired toddler hung from his mother’s hip as he dipped his hand into a colorfully decorated box to pull out a hot pink card. “This one,” he said cheerfully as he handed off his selection to Chilmarker Todd Christy.
Mr. Christy glanced at the card. “Four Beech Grove,” he said.
The boy’s was just one in a sea of smiling faces, but none were brighter than his mother, Jennifer Wlodyka’s, as she heard Mr. Christy call out her new address to the crowd.
It’s been 120 years since the Noyes Building on Pennacock avenue first opened its doors to the Oak Bluffs community, serving as a post office, a market and most recently a library. And now it houses Conroy’s Apothecary and three affordable housing apartments, welcoming lower income families into a more urban neighborhood.
The house at 49 Bailey Park Road in West Tisbury has new owners.
At a groundbreaking ceremony last Saturday, Doug Ruskin, president of Habitat for Humanity of Martha’s Vineyard, introduced Joe Fragosa Jr., his wife, Jennifer, and their five-year-old daughter, Briana.
Mr. Fragosa, 51, said he and his wife have been looking for a permanent home for seven years. He is an arborist who grew up on the Island. She is a water safety instructor.
Briana Fragosa almost jumped out of her bright pink Crocs. The butterfly pin holding back her long hair threatened to take flight as its owner bounced and bounced yelling, “Five minutes! Five minutes!”