The Massachusetts chapter of The Nature Conservancy announced this week it will purchase the John Hoft Farm, 90 acres of rolling pastures and unspoiled morainal woodlands which embrace Duarte’s Pond and the moist bogs off Lambert’s Cove Road in West Tisbury.
The farm is owned by Daniel Alisio and will be named the Hoft Farm Preserve, in memory of his late wife, Marguerite Hoft Alisio, whose family owned the farm for over 100 years.
Nearly 20 years ago in his landmark Vineyard book People and Predicaments, Island psychiatrist Milton Mazer recalled the beginnings of Martha’s Vineyard Community Services. He wrote:
“The venture to provide human services for the Island was begun in 1960 by a small group of Island physicians and clergymen. Their almost daily experience with the many Islanders overwhelmed by human predicaments had led them to look for remedies, and a psychiatric service seemed a good place to begin.
Ronald H. Rappaport, the respected and ubiquitous Martha’s Vineyard attorney whose work cut across nearly every aspect of Island life, died unexpectedly Friday night in Vineyard Haven
In 1972, the Vineyard was largely undeveloped, a quiet place with a scattering of mostly modest summer homes. The natural landscape was unspoiled with broad, open vistas to the sea. There was no zoning except for small areas in the town centers.
The creation of the Martha's Vineyard Commission harks back to meetings around kitchen tables in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the first comprehensive zoning maps were drafted for the Island.
Preservation efforts at Flat Point Farm topped the list of activities for the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank in 2023, followed by partnerships in affordable housing.
The long-term lease signed this fall expands the land bank’s holdings at Flat Point farm, which include a large field and pondfront property on the southern side of the farm that were protected in 2013.
Members of the MacKenty family in Edgartown are now in the final stages of negotiations to sell some 200 acres of their Edgartown Great Pond land to a group that plans to build a golf course on it, the Gazette has learned.
“We are negotiating, but we can’t comment on much until we have an agreement,” said Jeremiah MacKenty this week. “But yes, I’d say we are fairly close,” he added.
A plan to build a private golf club on land owned by the MacKenty family in Edgartown will get its first public airing this week when the Edgartown zoning board of appeals opens a hearing on an application for a special permit associated with the proposed development.
The MacKentys have signed an agreement to sell some 200 acres of their Edgartown Great Pond land to Rosario and Barry Latucca, a father and son team from Natick. The Latuccas hope to build an 18-hole golf club on the property.
