Building projects under way at properties on Spring street and Beach Road in Tisbury, potentially to be used as employee housing, are drawing fire from residents and the planning board, who say the town has not followed proper regulatory procedures in permitting the work.

The properties are being developed by Xerxes Aghassipour, an Island landlord whose other holdings in Tisbury include the Educomp building on State Road and a recently-completed rental home on William street.

The projects include a nine-bedroom, four-level house at 97 Spring street and reconfiguring a mixed-use building at 123 Beach Road, doubling the bedroom count to four and moving the residential space to the back of an existing tile shop.

Neighbors of the Spring street property say their quality of life will suffer if, as expected, the nine-bedroom home becomes a group residence for unrelated employees of Island businesses.

Signs of protestation have popped up throughout town.

Ray Ewing

Signs of protestation have popped up throughout town.

Ray Ewing

The Martha’s Vineyard Commission will weigh in on the disputes at a Sept. 9 meeting of its land use planning committee, which will determine whether or not the commission takes up the projects as developments of regional impact.

The projects are currently on hold while the MVC process plays out, Mr. Aghassipour told the Gazette this week.

“We seem to be caught in a disagreement between the planning board and their building commissioner,” he said.

Signs reading “Save our Neighborhoods” have started to pop up around Tisbury and neighbors have been petitioning other towns to back their push for the project to be fully reviewed by the commission. 

Bernadette Cormie, who with her husband Leigh lives next door to the 97 Spring street project, said Mr. Aghassipour rented a smaller home there to workers from overseas for two summers before demolishing it this January.

The Cormies are dreading an even larger household now, she said.

“Both summers were hell for us,” Ms. Cormie said, citing marijuana smoke that seeped into her home and noisy comings and goings late at night.

“Cars parking 10 feet from our bedroom window with the engines running and music blaring,” she said. “I know precisely what it’s like living near half that number of people, with the same landlord.”

The Cormies and other neighbors, including Kate Leonard of nearby Franklin street, say building permits should not have been issued because a town zoning bylaw prohibits renting to more than five people who are not related.

The Spring street property has two buildings.

Ray Ewing

The Spring street property has two buildings.

Ray Ewing

“I object to the fact that the law is on the books and is not being enforced,” Ms. Leonard said.

A four-bedroom house behind the tile shop on Beach Road has already been rehabbed and is occupied by the family of a Vineyard Wind executive, Mr. Aghassipour said.

According to public records, in June the Tisbury planning board asked town building commissioner Greg Monka to refer the entire Beach Road project for a special permit from the board, saying the expansion represents a change to a pre-existing use. After no referral was forthcoming, the board voted in July to appeal to the MVC, telling the commission that the building permits were issued prematurely and out of procedural order. 

Mr. Aghassipour said he believes he has the right to build as planned on both properties, and that Tisbury should not selectively apply the bylaw to him when many other houses in town may also be occupied by more than five unrelated people.

“I don’t think the five-person rule has ever been enforced. We could be talking about hundreds of people,” he said. “Where are these people moving to if they stop it?”

If Tisbury wishes to enact a workforce housing bylaw, Mr. Aghassipour said, it should be enforced across the board.

“Then they would have a fair and equitable mechanism to move forward with, and right now they don’t,” he said.

Mr. Aghassipour also said he has not yet determined who will be living in the Spring street house, but that one possibility is a master lease to an Island employer who would manage its workers’ tenancy.