Real Estate
The Chilmark planning board moved ahead this week with a proposed amendment to town zoning bylaws that would require all pools in the town be heated with renewable energy. After a discussion and public hearing on Monday the board unanimously voted to forward revised wording of a proposed bylaw to the town selectmen for placement on a special town meeting warrant. The meeting is set for Oct. 29.
Concluding four years of negotiations, the Chilmark selectmen this week announced a three-way land swap which will open up a new conservation corridor between North and South Roads and create four affordable homesites in town.
The land swap involves the town, the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank and the Hillman family, longtime summer residents who own property in Chilmark. No money will change hands in the deal. Final approval will be needed from Chilmark voters, the town planning board and also the state legislature.
In what promises to be an interesting and perhaps emotional doubleheader, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission on Thursday will review both a plan to expand the baseball park at Veira Park in Oak Bluffs and another to designate five ancient pathways in Edgartown into a special protection zone that might limit their use and future development.
Local pool builders, contractors and Chilmark selectmen showed up to a public hearing of the planning board Monday afternoon to discuss a proposed amendment to town zoning bylaws.
The amendment would require heated swimming pools built in the town to use solar thermal heating systems as the primary source of energy to heat that pool. The planning board hopes to put the amendment on the warrant for an Oct. 29 special town meeting.
Driven by 23 foreclosures in Vineyard Haven during the first half of 2007, Island home foreclosure activity rose from 17 in 2006 to 40 for the same period in 2007, an increase of 235 per cent.
Some evidence suggests the increase has ties to subprime lending, where lenders do business with borrowers who can’t obtain conventional mortgage financing and charge them higher costs.
The developers of a proposed exclusive recreational club at Katama have resubmitted their application, substantially unchanged, to the Edgartown zoning board of appeals only two weeks after withdrawing it in the face of opposition from some board members.