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.
Developers who want to build a private golf club along the Edgartown Great Pond turned up the volume this week on a campaign to win public support for their project, pitching the plan through eye-catching paid advertisements in both Island newspapers as the Martha’s Vineyard Commission continued deliberations on the project.
Declaring “We’ve Gone Organic,” the bold advertisements purport to detail a new shift toward organic turf management techniques for the golf course development.
A key subcommittee of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission began deliberating this week on a proposal for a private 18-hole golf club on the Edgartown Great Pond, but not before a brittle debate that saw one member of the MVC launch a harsh personal attack on a fellow commissioner.
The commission land use planning committee (LUPC) is expected to develop recommendations on the Meeting House Golf Club project in the next couple of weeks.
For the second week running last night, a plan to build an 18-hole golf course along the Edgartown Great Pond was subjected to a tough public grilling for more than three and a half hours on everything from pesticide use to membership policies.
A group of developers who want to build a golf course along the Edgartown Great Pond heard a team of scientists dismantle their environmental science last night, alongside an outpouring of statements from a striking array of Vineyard residents who urged the Martha’s Vineyard Commission in passionate tones to reject the golf course plan.
“We need to think about Martha’s Vineyard and why do we all live here?” said Tara Hickman.
“Trade a natural piece of heaven on earth for a manicured, hyper-fertilized artificial landscape? No thank you,” declared Liz Bradley.
At a joint meeting held this week in Aquinnah, the board of selectmen and conservation commission unanimously endorsed two conservation restrictions along Moshup Trail. The gift of the restrictions -- called CRs -- was held up several weeks ago as selectmen inquired into the relative benefits to be gained from them.
Developers at a hearing last night described the Meeting House Golf Club project as a blessing for the environment. The project would remove nitrogen from the groundwater, they said, improve the salinity of the Edgartown Great Pond and protect the rare plant known as gypsywort.
Some members of the public questioned those claims. And two opponents of the project hinted that scientific experts will appear, when the hearing continues, to offer different ideas about the environmental impacts of the golf resort proposed by Rosario Lattuca.
The day was cold and clear at the old John Hoft Farm. Pale grasses danced in the wind buffeting the pasture, and nearby ponds were alive with wavelets. Gathered by the farmhouse were more than two dozen Islanders, walkers ready for a tour of this historic property off Lambert’s Cove Road.
As discussion begins to heat up around the issue of whether to build private golf clubs on the Vineyard, a citizens group has formed to oppose a golf club development planned for some 200 acres of land along the Edgartown Great Pond.
Called the Coalition for Preservation of Island Resources, the group includes a number of property owners near the planned golf course project. The key organizers for the group are Edgartown residents Rick Bausman, Sally Apy and Candice Hogan.
