Million-dollar sales, mostly in Edgartown and Chilmark, are dominating the Island’s real estate market, as figures from the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank make abundantly clear.
Hard numbers illustrating the trend underscore urgent concerns about the lack of affordable housing, the subject of a standing-room-only forum last weekend.
A rising tide lifts all boats, and the evolution of million-dollar price tags from shocking rarities to barely remarked commonplaces has ratcheted up the cost of even the most basic shelter.
In a move that is expected to knock down many established barriers to the land protection movement, The Nature Conservancy announced this week that it will buy and put into private conservation 103 acres of land along the Edgartown Great Pond. The property just last year was planned for a private luxury golf club.
Formerly owned by Katharine and Robert Bigelow, the property stretches from Meetinghouse Way to the Kanomika Neck shore of the Great Pond fronting Mashacket Cove, and includes a large expanse of globally rare sandplain grassland.
Attorneys on both sides of a bitter, four-year dispute which centers on painful charges of racism against the town of Tisbury and its police department announced yesterday that a settlement has been reached in the case.
Attorneys for Theopholis M. (T.M.) Silvia 3rd and the town of Tisbury said yesterday that the terms of the settlement are extremely complicated and will not be disclosed until the agreement is approved by both the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) and a Superior Court judge.
Bucking the national trend on the Republican side, but closely mirroring the electoral mood of the country on the Democratic side, voters in Dukes County threw their support to Sen. John McCain and Vice President Al Gore in the presidential primary on Tuesday.
Texas Gov. George W. Bush did not take a single town in the county - which includes Martha's Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands - but former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley did very well here, landing the majority vote on the Democratic ticket in Aquinnah and Chilmark, and trailing by only a few votes in the other five towns.
Gus Ben David is an Island institution. For 30 years he has directed Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary. Anyone walking the trails gets a sense of a wild place that is tended by loving hands. The open grassland is mowed at strategic times of year. Waterfowl find refuge in the small duck pond at the far end of the property.
The Sharp house on Starbuck’s Neck in Edgartown was sold this week to a Connecticut family for $11,225,000.
The price is a Martha’s Vineyard benchmark of sorts, although a north shore property that included 80 acres of waterfront property sold last year for $12 million.
The summer home on Starbuck’s Neck is a single dwelling on three acres — but among the most prime three acres on the Vineyard, with a lawn down to Edgartown outer harbor facing Edgartown Lighthouse.
Ending an exhaustive regional and local review that began some 15 months ago, the Edgartown zoning board of appeals voted unanimously this week to approve a plan for a private 18-hole golf club at the site of an old subdivision in the rural perimeters of Edgartown.
“I feel it complies with the vision set forth in the bylaw, and I don’t think it will adversely affect the neighborhood,” said John Magnuson, a member of the appeals board, just before the vote on Wednesday night.
The dollar volume of real estate sales on Martha’s Vineyard was far higher in 1999 than in any previous year, reaching almost $350 million. The previous record, in 1998, was about $308 million.
Although it has been clear in recent years that a real estate boom is sweeping the Island, the figures are stark proof. The current boom began in 1996, when the total real estate sales for the year reached $186 million, climbing to $243 million the following year. The last two years have been simply astonishing.
