Heavy on Island hotels with a handful of fun and games in the mix, Boston-based developer Charles Hajjar and wife Anne own properties in Edgartown and Oak Bluffs.

The Goldstein family has owned the Mansion House at the head of Main street Vineyard Haven for the past four decades, with Sherman and Susan Goldstein buying the hotel in February 1986.

Larkin Stallings, the owner of the Ritz Cafe in Oak Bluffs, realized his prospects of becoming a famous bass guitarist were grim shortly after opening his first music club.

One of a handful of female owners of main street properties when she founded Claudia in Vineyard Haven in 1971, Claudia Canerdy says she never thought of herself as an anomaly.

Sitting on a bench in front of Vineyard Scoops ice cream shop, Geno Courtney spends his days surveying Edgartown’s downtown.

The Hall family history of Island real estate ownership runs deep in all three down-Island main streets and beyond.

The Gazette set out to answer the question who, exactly, owns the downtowns? The analysis found that while ownership is varied and covers a wide spectrum, certain family names jumped out, among them Hall, Courtney and Hajjar.

Powerful state legislators on a hostile mission to take over the Island ferry system. Moneyed mainland developers on a singular mission to convert the last pieces of open space into huge profits. A vise-grip of housing problems for middle-income workers. Wobbly leadership. A voter-driven mandate for change on the Martha’s Vineyard Commission. Baffling tick-borne disease. Cold winter. Rainy summer.

Explosive population growth and all its attendant social issues. A rebounding economy fueled by a robust real estate market. A painful crush of early summer traffic and along with it the sobering realization that the Island has nearly reached its threshold for seasonal population. A mild winter and a nearly cloudless summer capped by a peaceful concert in a West Tisbury field with an unprecedented gathering of more than 10,000 people. These are the benchmarks of the year 1995 on Martha's Vineyard.

Two Boston area businessmen and a Mississippi real estate developer have announced plans to build a private golf club on the former Vineyard Acres II property off the West Tisbury Road in Edgartown.

The would-be developers are Jay Swanson of Medfield, Owen Larkin of Boston and William Vandevender of Jackson, Miss. Their partnership is called Swanson Ventures L.L.C.