The owners of Reliable Market are proposing to demolish the former Phillips Hardware store on Circuit avenue in order to build a new Victorian-style mixed use building that would have retail space and housing. 

The plans for 30 Circuit avenue came before the Martha’s Vineyard Commission’s advisory land use planning committee on Monday. As proposed, the three-story new building would have two retail spaces on the lower level and 10 apartments dedicated to year-round employee housing on the upper floors. 

The owner and applicant is Jennifer Freeman Pacheco of 30 Circuit LLC, which also owns Reliable Market next door. The Gazette could not immediately reach Ms. Freeman Pacheco for comment regarding the specifics of the retail units’ intended use, but the application notes they would be used to sell dry goods.

A version of this project was originally proposed in 2016 by Phillips Hardware owners Donna Leon and Susan Phillips. The commission approved the plans, but it was never built. Now before the commission is a permit modification tweaking the original design but maintaining the intended use, according to commission documents.

At Monday’s meeting, land use planning committee members discussed the proposed project and recommended that the full commission open a public hearing at its meeting Thursday.

Commission executive director Adam Turner confirmed that the changes to the previously approved design will be functionally minimal, but he noted that the new design is visually different from what the commission already approved.

“The only difference, really, in this project is going to be what it looks like,” he said. “It looks significantly different.”

The current building at 30 Circuit avenue likely dates back to the mid-1870s, the commission’s preservation consultant Eric Dray estimated. Phillips Hardware, which had been open in Oak Bluffs for nearly a century, closed last year when Ms. Leon and Ms. Phillips decided to retire.

Project agent Mike Fletcher said the proposal seeks to honor the original building’s history while also blending in with the street and adjacent Camp Ground neighborhood. 

The project, dubbed Oakwood, derives its name from the former Oakwood Hotel and its architecture from the late-19th-century resort era hotels and boarding houses that used to grace Circuit avenue.

Among the design elements are a mansard roof, symmetrical massing and vertical, arched windows, all of which are nods to Victorian hotel architecture, the applicant’s team said. It will be built modularly, meaning at least some parts of the building will be constructed off-site.

“We’re trying to mimic the old building and give it a fresher look,” Mr. Fletcher said.

The proposal would have a mix of one- and two-bedroom apartments, ranging from 650 square feet to 1,300 square feet. The two retail spaces would be 2,270 square feet each. 

“There are several possibilities for those spaces, but nothing chosen at this time,” Mr. Fletcher wrote in a letter to the commission.

The building will require 840 gallons of wastewater per day, the same amount approved by the wastewater commission in prior versions of the project.

Initially, the applicant planned to have the demolition and rebuild largely complete by April. Some staff and commissioners said they felt this timeline was unrealistic, given that it’s already mid-January.

The commission will discuss the proposal on Thursday, at which time it will decide whether to open a public hearing.