The developers who recently lost their bid to build a private golf club on some 200 acres of land along the Edgartown Great Pond intend to file a new plan and try again.
“We are neither dead nor finished,” declared a letter sent to the founding members of the Meeting House Golf Club one day after the plan was voted down by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission.
The letter was sent by mail and by fax to 30 seasonal residents of the Vineyard who advanced some $2 million in start-up money for the failed golf course project.
The Tisbury board of selectmen took the first step this week toward regulating activity in Vineyard Haven harbor by placing a proposal on the table to nominate the waterway as a District of Critical Planning Concern (DCPC).
If the plan moves forward, much of the harbor could be designated by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission as a resource to be protected, beginning a process of establishing development guidelines for the area.
Ending months of debate, untold numbers of hours of public testimony and weeks of bruising deliberations, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission voted 7 to 6 last night to deny a proposal for a private 18-hole golf club on some 200 acres of land along the Edgartown Great Pond.
A sharply divided subcommittee of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission completed an evaluation of a proposal for a golf club along the Edgartown Great Pond with little in the way of accord this week, but decided to wait one more week before voting on a recommendation on the project.
“This committee is not going to come up with a clear recommendation,” declared commission member Linda Sibley.
“The committee is going to come out with two reports,” concluded commission member Jennie Greene.
The developers who want to build a golf course along the Edgartown Great Pond jacked up the pressure this week in an attempt to gain favorable votes from members of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission.
Opponents of the golf course project also are waging a lobbying campaign, including a series of paid advertisements, but the campaign by the developers is now clearly accompanied by high-pressure tactics more commonly seen in Boston than on the Cape and Islands.
Editor’s note: The following is the full text of an Aquinnah planning board statement asking the Martha’s Vineyard Commission to designate the entire town a District of Critical Planning Concern:
The executive director of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission said this week that the regional land use commission will ask the developers for the Meeting House Golf Club project to agree to a three-week extension for the review process.
“The setting and the site are of such a complicated nature that the time frame does not allow us to adjust,” said MVC executive director Charles Clifford. “It is basically to give us a little more time to digest exactly what it is that the applicant has submitted,” he added.
A citizens group that opposes a proposal for an 18-hole private golf club along the Edgartown Great Pond took its turn in the spotlight this week, responding sharply to an advertising campaign started by the golf course developers last week.
“They’ve ‘Gone Organic.’ We Think They’re Dead Wrong. Do You?” declares a full-page advertisement that appears in today’s Gazette.
The advertisement is a rejoinder to paid advertisements in both Island newspapers last week from the developers who want to build a golf club along the Edgartown Great Pond.
