The Martha’s Vineyard Commission has approved an expansion project for the Vineyard Golf Club in Edgartown, which is planning to build a new, freestanding pro shop, a cart barn and a loading dock.
The club also intends to enlarge its restaurant and bar, add a cocktail patio and 34 additional parking spaces and partially relocate a driveway on the property, with associated drainage improvements.
The June 11 approval modifies the commission’s 1999 approval of the 235-acre golf club, located off Metcalf Drive near the West Tisbury Road.
Commissioner Willa Kuh cast the sole vote against the application. She also opposed it at the June 8 meeting of the MVC land use planning committee, which voted 5-1 with two abstentions to recommend approval of the changes.
The majority of commissioners found the proposed changes, which club representatives said were intended to encourage members to spend more time on the premises, would not increase the intensity of use on the site.
The private, 18-hole club, built on the site of a failed subdivision once known as Vineyard Acres II, operates under a conservation agreement with Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation, which retains the right to supervise the environmental impact of golf club activities.
The Edgartown conservation commission also is authorized to oversee the site, while the MVC’s original 1999 approval created a water-monitoring review committee for the club with members from the town board of health, the Edgartown ponds advisory committee and the UMass Amherst Extension, now part of the university’s Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment.
“Between the three of them, I don’t think any plan that would encompass any of the things that those three bodies look at, at this course, will slip through the cracks,” said Richard Saltzberg, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission coordinator for developments of regional impact.
Also on June 11, the commission continued two public hearings without testimony, in each case at the request of the applicant.
The hearing on Aquinnah Headwaters, a planned healing center for women, is set to resume July 9 and the hearing on proposed housing behind the Dairy Queen in Edgartown was continued to July 23.
The next Martha’s Vineyard Commission meeting is an executive session June 17 to discuss a legal challenge from Marc and Erica Recht, whose application to build an accessory dwelling on their Chilmark property was denied by the commission in February.
This article appears in June 19, 2026.
The blatant approval by the MVC of a “playground for the wealthy” with 34 more cars, 34 more spaces of asphalt and runoff and let’s not even get into more buildings haha! Yet we can’t even figure out housing. Good luck to us all and keep on rocking in the free world MVC. You’re doing great.
Housing? This project creates ZERO new jobs and VGC houses dozens of employees. “playground for the wealthy” ? Who do you think paid for the new hospital? Who do you think attends the the Possible Dreams auction each year? Who do you think pays the vast majority of our taxes? It’s folks like the members of this club.
I will never understand why this club was not built on the premise of Farm Neck Golf Course. It is a lot of land and resources dedicated to a small number of people. I know this happens everywhere on the main land, but we are not the main land and have a lot of people who vacation on the island and need places to play golf. I love the concepts of Mike Meadows and Farm Neck Golf Courses they represent the island. I guess it’s too late now to make changes now but please no expansions on our already over taxed fragile island….
I’d rather have a golf club instead of a bunch of houses that were going to be built by the former failed subdivision.