The developer proposing 15 rental apartments behind the Dairy Queen in Edgartown may allow the town to restrict a fourth of the complex to lower-income tenants for years to come, depending on the result of talks with Edgartown’s affordable housing committee.
“The idea would be, they would buy down the difference between the market rate and what they would be renting them for at 80 per cent AMI [area median income],” hearing officer Douglas Sederholm said at the public hearing Sept. 3.
Affordable housing committee chair Melissa Vincent said the arrangement would be a first for Martha’s Vineyard.
“This has been done on Nantucket, but … we’ve never had a case where a town has [bought down] units for affordability from a developer before,” she told the commission.
All 15 of the proposed apartments behind the Dairy Queen would be restricted to year-round Island residents for their primary homes, according to the application from property owner Jessica Rosenberg.
The town, however, wants to ensure that some apartments are available to lower-income locals, Ms. Vincent said.
“For this project to have any meaning at all to the town of Edgartown, it needs to provide a benefit to the residents of the town of Edgartown,” she said.
Mr. Sederholm outlined another potential benefit: By restricting the four apartments to Islanders earning up to 80 per cent of the area median income, the entire development would qualify for inclusion in the town’s state-mandated inventory of subsidized housing.
Adding the four units to the inventory would give Edgartown a year’s worth of what is called “safe harbor” from a state law called Chapter 40B, which exempts developers from many local zoning bylaws when their projects include below-market-rate housing.
Towns and cities achieve longer-lasting safe harbor status when at least 10 per cent of their housing is under long-term restrictions for low- and moderate-income residents, according to the law.
Ms. Vincent and the developer’s attorney, Geoghan Coogan, said negotiations are continuing and that there is no formal offer yet.
Other outstanding issues of concern for the Dairy Queen housing project include parking and traffic circulation on the eight-acre site, where a one-directional driveway would serve two apartment buildings.
Transportation engineer Steven Findlen of Howard Stein Hudson, which is reviewing the proposal for the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, testified Sept. 3 that his firm is waiting for data from the applicant on how large trucks will be able to negotiate the driveway and where moving vans will load and unload, among other questions.
Residents of Pinehurst Road, which runs directly behind the project site, continue to oppose the development.
“[One building] is 30 feet tall and is going to be at 5 feet from our property line … and so you have a six-to-one height versus setback, which is very oppressive for Pinehurst,” resident Marcus Smith said.
The Martha’s Vineyard Commission is scheduled to continue its hearing on the Dairy Queen housing proposal Oct. 1.
Editor's note: a previous version of this article incorrectly stated Edgartown's proposal to make the units affordable. It has been corrected.
This article appears in September 11, 2026.
Wrong place for this project. See the article about traffic stats. It reminds me of the time someone pushed affordable housing into Five Corners. What are the motives?