The Martha’s Vineyard Commission voted 7-5 Thursday night to approve a nine-bedroom house in Tisbury that has drawn fierce opposition from neighbors, who say they don’t want workforce housing near their properties.

Conditions for the approval of 97 Spring street include reduced outdoor lighting and a limit of nine residents, with no more than 14 different people allowed to live at the home in the course of a year.

Owner and developer Xerxes Aghassipour next must gain approval from Tisbury officials in order to receive a certificate of occupancy for the nine-bedroom house, which he has said he intends to rent to a business such as Vineyard Wind for employee housing.

Commissioners Jay Grossman, Greg Martino, Douglas Sederholm, Linda Sibley, Brian Smith, Ernie Thomas and Peter Wharton voted in the majority, agreeing that the probable benefits to Island housing likely would outweigh the probable detriments of the development.

“The building meets our requirements and … I think we really can’t turn it down,” Mr. Thomas said.

Jeff Agnoli, Mark Gauthier, Michael Kim, Katherine Newman and Kate Putnam voted against the project, saying it was inappropriate for the long-established residential neighborhood.

“Workforce housing [is] desperately needed on the Island, but it’s not needed in this neighborhood,” Mr. Kim said.

“Permanent residents leave their souls in the neighborhood. And I don’t think that’s going to happen here,” he said.

Commissioners who voted in the majority argued that Tisbury town officials should have the final say on how Mr. Aghassipour uses the property.

“He applied for a building permit. He got a building permit. He followed what appeared to be the town rules [and] whether there were mistakes at the town level, is not for us to determine,” Mr. Sederholm said.

“He came here with a nine-bedroom building that he said, ‘I want to rent for workforce housing.’ That is his proposal to us. That’s what we have to address,” said Mr. Sederholm, who also noted that Tisbury has a regulation governing lodging houses.

“If the town of Tisbury finds that this is a lodging house, the applicant will have to abide by the town’s regulations and the applicant may have to get a special permit to meet the bylaw and would have to get an annual license. But again, that’s for the towns to deal with,” he said.

Ms. Sibley said by adding another nine bedrooms of workforce housing, the Spring street house would open up available living space elsewhere on the Island.

“These transient people will not be taking up space that other people who might be here year-round would otherwise benefit from,” she said.

The home has been a lightning rod in Vineyard Haven, spurring signs in town that carry the slogan “Save our neighborhoods.”

Bernadette Cormie, who lives next door to 97 Spring street and was elected to the commission last November, and Ben Robinson, who serves on the Tisbury planning board as well as on the MVC, have recused themselves from participation throughout the MVC review, which started in February.

The two, as well Ms. Cormie’s husband Leigh and planning board administrator Amy Upton, are being sued in Dukes County Superior Court by Mr. Aghassipour, who asserts they engaged in a conspiracy to abuse the legal process in order to discredit his reputation and violate his rights.

The Cormies also filed a lawsuit against Mr. Aghassipour in state Land Court, asking a judge to overturn the town’s decision to allow the project to go forward.

Mr. Aghassipour had a permit from the Tisbury building commissioner when he razed an existing four-bedroom home on the Spring street lot last year and built a nine-bedroom residence with en suite baths.

Neighbors and some town officials cried foul, saying the project should have been referred to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission for review as a development of regional impact (DRI).

“If this is allowed to go through it will set a precedent that allows anyone to build out and fill to the max any house in any neighborhood, calling it ‘single family’ when in reality it functions as a boarding house or inn,” Spring street resident Anna Finnerty wrote to the commission.

Executive director Adam Turner initially denied a request to take up the project, saying it didn’t meet the commission’s DRI criteria.

The town planning board and board of health then jointly filed for what’s called a discretionary referral, which commissioners accepted.

This marks the first time the MVC has accepted a discretionary referral since 2011, when it agreed to review the proposed roundabout at Barnes and Edgartown-Vineyard Haven roads in Oak Bluffs. That project passed in a 7-6 vote.

Also Thursday, the commission unanimously approved a small workforce housing project for Island Gymnastics in West Tisbury, where owner Elizabeth Goodell plans to build a year-round, one-bedroom dwelling unit with two seasonal sleeping porches for visiting gymnastics coaches.

As part of the approval, Island Gymnastics must install additional water monitoring equipment and have its wastewater flow monitored for 10 years.

The 10-year monitoring requirement would go back into effect whenever the property changes hands, according to the MVC decision. Commissioners declined to take up an application from Crown Castle, which owns a telecommunications tower in West Tisbury, to add and repair equipment on the tower. West Tisbury officials now will proceed to vet the project.

The controversial Katama Meadows subdivision proposal in Edgartown also was on Thursday’s MVC agenda, but the public hearing was continued without testimony at the request of the developers, who are seeking to raise the income limit for what had been proposed as low-income housing on the property.

The commission’s land use subcommittee is scheduled to discuss the revised project with the applicants at a public meeting next month, before the full commission takes further action.