Real Estate
The developers for the upscale Field Club and adjoining subdivision in Katama have agreed to pay the Edgartown affordable housing committee $1.8 million in lieu of designating three lots in their project for affordable housing as required by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission.
The project was approved as a development of regional impact (DRI) in 2004 and calls for the construction of a 32-lot subdivision on the 24-acre site as well as a members-only recreational club. Club owners plan to sell 500 memberships for about $100,000 apiece.
The real estate bust has cut sharply into the revenue of the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank for a second successive year, with land bank income more than 25 per cent lower than it was in 2006, the last of the good years for property sales.
For fiscal year 2008, which just ended, the land bank took in $9.56 million. This was down 14 per cent from the $11.12 million of 2007, which was in turn 14 per cent below the $12.94 million of 2006.
Spokesmen for the Vineyard Golf Club last week formally withdrew their plans to build nine luxury homes for club members.
The withdrawal cleared the way for the Martha’s Vineyard Commission to approve a scaled-down version of the project, calling only for the construction of an employee dormitory and a stand-alone bathroom on the course.
At the start of Thursday’s regular commission meeting, chairman Douglas Sederholm read a letter from project engineer Dick Barbini stating the Edgartown golf club was withdrawing its plan for member housing.
Vineyard homeowners who already pay some of the highest home insurance costs in the country will not see their rates go up this year.
After the state insurance commissioner last month rejected a proposed 25 per cent rate hike for the FAIR Plan, the state-backed insurance provider of last resort, some speculated officials for the plan would appeal the ruling.
But at a meeting last Thursday, the insurer’s board of directors decided not to appeal the ruling, at least for now.
They thought their house would sell right away.
It is a common refrain and one that longtime Island residents Woody and Phyllis Williams, who put their house on the market last April, know all too well.
Mr. Williams, born and raised in Edgartown, is an Island native. Mrs. Williams moved here at age 19, after spending her childhood summers also in Edgartown. The couple met in 1981, got engaged one year later and married in Edgartown the following year.
Island homeowners who already pay some of the highest home insurance rates in the nation received some rare good news last week when the state insurance commissioner rejected a proposed 25 per cent rate hike for the FAIR Plan, the state-backed insurance provider of last resort for most Vineyarders.
In her May 8 decision, insurance commissioner Nonnie Burnes said FAIR plan officials failed to demonstrate a need for the proposed rate hike.