The trees have been cleared, the land smoothed over; the contours of a new 18-hole golf course in Edgartown are taking shape. While it is months before grass seed takes root, the landscape already presents vistas never seen before. The Vineyard Golf Club project is well under way.
Mother Nature is keeping the Vineyard Golf Club under construction until the next summer season.
Even though the fairways and contours of the course are beginning to glow in a shade of bright green, the caretakers of Vineyard Golf Club refuse to open the 71-acre facility until they know it can sustain foot and cart traffic.
“We agreed to do this the right way. It’s really a labor of love,” said Owen Larkin, managing partner of Vineyard Golf Club.
The way golf enthusiasts talk about the Island’s newest course — which officially opened just over a week ago off Edgartown-West Tisbury Road in Edgartown — you expect to see guys walking around the clubhouse wearing kilts.
Well, don’t worry. The course at the Vineyard Golf Club may be unforgiving Scottish-inspired design, but the garb is just the kind of pastel microfiber blends you’ll find on most any golf course in the country.
Make that private course. A membership costs about $300,000.
The Vineyard Golf Club completed its purchase this week of four lots owned by the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation in the old Vineyard Acres II subdivision off the West Tisbury Road in Edgartown.
The four lots include four acres of land and were sold to the golf club by the conservation group for $310,000. Of that, $10,000 was paid to the foundation as an option at the time of the sale agreement and was used to cover legal expenses associated with the sale.
Two Boston area businessmen and a Mississippi real estate developer have announced plans to build a private golf club on the former Vineyard Acres II property off the West Tisbury Road in Edgartown.
The would-be developers are Jay Swanson of Medfield, Owen Larkin of Boston and William Vandevender of Jackson, Miss. Their partnership is called Swanson Ventures L.L.C.
As proposals for golf courses begin to pile up on the Island, the Sheriff's Meadow Foundation released a white paper last week that among other things explains the reasoning behind a decision to oppose a golf course development on the MacKenty land in Edgartown, but not oppose a similar proposal for the Vineyard Acres II subdivision.
"A golf course at Vineyard Acres II — especially the right kind of course — would have far less environmental and ecological impact than the 148 houses that are allowed under the subdivision plan," the paper states in part.
The Martha’s Vineyard Commission voted 13-3 last night to approve a plan for a private 18-hole golf club on the site of an old subdivision in the rural perimeters of Edgartown, first spending nearly three hours developing a heavy set of more than 20 conditions which will force the developer to return to the commission on a number of fronts before the project can go forward.
New developers of the old Vineyard Acres II subdivision in Edgartown have filed an application with the Edgartown zoning board of appeals to build a private 18-hole golf club on the site once planned for 148 houses.
Leaders in the two rival golf course development groups in Edgartown said yesterday that they will merge memberships and stop competing with each other.
Owen Larkin, the managing partner for the Vineyard Golf Club, confirmed that he has signed an agreement to offer guaranteed membership to every member of the Meetinghouse Golf Club Inc. In return, the leading developers for Meetinghouse have agreed not to reapply for permission to build an 18-hole golf course on the MacKenty family property along the Edgartown Great Pond, Mr. Larkin said.
Some 245 acres of land once planned for 148 houses in the rural perimeters of Edgartown were sold last week to a golf club development group, closing a key chapter in a complicated land transaction which began nearly two years ago.
Total sale price was $15.9 million. The sale resulted in a sharp spike in revenues for the week for the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank, which collected $318,000 in fees from the transaction.
