Occupying almost every available seat in the Chilmark Community Center, voters rejected a $2 million purchase of the Home Port restaurant at a special town meeting last night, flouting months of effort on the part of selectmen to acquire the Menemsha restaurant and surrounding property for public use.
As a result of last night’s vote, the longstanding Menemsha seafood restaurant will now likely go to Robert and Sarah Nixon, private buyers who signed an alternate purchase agreement with the current owners.
Chilmark selectmen signed an agreement Tuesday to purchase the Home Port restaurant, along with two neighboring waterfront lots, for a dramatically reduced price of $2 million.
The agreement, negotiated by selectman J.B. Riggs Parker on behalf of the board of selectmen with owners Will and Madeline Holtham, is almost half the price of a $3.9 million sale agreement rejected by Chilmark voters in 2005, though it does not include a lot with a dock currently used for restaurant parking.
With a town vote looming on whether to purchase the Home Port restaurant in Menemsha and turn it into municipal land, the long-running seafood restaurant closed its doors for the summer last Sunday, possibly never to reopen for business.
Meanwhile, two Chilmark innkeepers and restaurant owners have signed a new agreement with Home Port owners Will and Madeline Holtham to buy the property and keep the restaurant as a going concern if the town vote fails.
Chilmark’s most diehard scallopers will have a chance to increase the bushel limit in exchange for some community service.
Menemsha seafood retailer Karsten Larsen convinced selectmen at a meeting Tuesday to raise the small pond limits from two to three bushels a day, arguing that those ponds are oversubscribed with small scallops which would die in a freeze and potentially damage the pond bed.
The owners of the Home Port, who completed their purchase this month of the long-running Menemsha seafood restaurant, plan to make few changes in their first season.
Susan and Robert Nixon bought the restaurant from William and Madeline Holtham on Feb. 10, paying $2.3 million.
The Nixons, who also own the Menemsha and Beach Plum Inns, plan to retain elements from the old restaurant, from menu to staff and hope that customer loyalty for the business, which has been going since 1931, will prevail.
Hope for an ailing Island commercial fishery was on the menu at the Home Port restaurant in Menemsha Wednesday night, along with some hearty chowder and fresh herb-crusted swordfish.
Most of the Island fishing community was on hand for the first annual meeting of the Martha’s Vineyard Dukes County Fishermen’s Association, along with representatives from Cape Cod and Maine.
The Home Port restaurant in Menemsha has turned its back door green.
New owners Bob and Sarah Nixon and chef Johnny Graham saw environmental sustainability as an area where the landmark restaurant could improve in this, its 80th year of business, and they are starting with the huge volume of disposables that go through the eatery’s back door take-out facility every day.
Menemsha may have a new lunch option this summer, after the Chilmark selectmen approved an innkeeper and common victualler’s license for Dennis Barquinero, the new general manager of the Home Port, Beach Plum Inn and Menemsha Inn, with the understanding that Mr. Barquinero may open the Home Port’s take-out window for lunch.
Home Port Cookbook: > Beloved Recipes from Martha’s Vineyard. By Will Holtham with A. D. Minnick, Photography by Mike Buytas, Illustrations by Susan Tobey White, Lyons Press, $19.95
The owners of the Home Port Restaurant announced this week that from now on they will only serve locally-caught fish and shellfish at the landmark Menemsha eatery known for its sunsets and swordfish.
The sunsets will of course stay but swordfish will only be on the menu at the Home Port if it has been caught off the Vineyard, restaurant owner Sarah Guinan Nixon told a gathering of Island fishermen on Wednesday night.
