It’s not the Old Stone Bank any more.
After more than three years of permitting and construction, the mixed-use Stone Bank condominium project is a largely tenanted new mini-neighborhood in downtown Vineyard Haven.
Two shops have opened in the complex, which also is home to a recording studio, commercial offices and private residences with fireplaces and harbor views.
“We’re sold out,” said developer Reid (Sam) Dunn, who told the Gazette during a tour of the properties this week that he did not have to advertise for buyers, because word of mouth brought them to him.
Two restaurants are still to come: an outdoor taqueria on what had been the parking lot, to open this summer under the name El Barco, and a fine-dining establishment in the 119-year-old bank’s former lobby on Main street, which Mr. Dunn said will open in 2025.
A landscaped public walkway runs through the complex from Main street to Union street, passing Island fashion designer Angela Sison’s Conrado shop on the lower level of the bank building.
The walkway then winds past a private lawn shared by condominium owners and through a public mini-park with benches, plants and paving. The town of Tisbury has agreed to manage trash collection in the parklet with Mr. Dunn’s company handling other maintenance.
On Union street, the pathway’s entrance is flanked by the future El Barco and the outdoor seating area for separately-owned Salvatore’s Ristorante Italiano.
Mr. Dunn has also built apartments on the Union street side, including one which is deed-restricted for a lower income resident, and a Sea Bags shop that opened last year.
While preserving the original fieldstone bank building and annex, where Mone Insurance has its offices, Mr. Dunn went for a different look in the project’s new construction.
Each clapboard building is painted a different color: olive green, Breton red, egg-yolk yellow, teal blue and cream.
“I’m just so sick of little gray boxes, I really am,” said Mr. Dunn, who purchased the long-vacant property from Santander Bank in 2021 for $2.5 million.
Santander had closed its branch in what was then called the Old Stone Bank building in 2017, while suing the Martha’s Vineyard Commission for denying the company’s unpermitted replacement of historic terra-cotta roof tiles with asphalt shingles.
The two parties settled in 2018 when Santander agreed to restore the tiled roof, but the bank building remained vacant for long enough that by 2019, the Tisbury select board discussed whether the town should buy it.
Built as a bank in 1905, the original building was financed by National Gramophone Company executive William Barry Owen, whose family endowed nearby Owen Park after his death in 1914.
Its knobbly fieldstone exterior, Spanish-style roof, arched windows and heavily studded front door bespeak both an earlier time and a building style not often seen on Martha’s Vineyard.
Mr. Dunn saw the property’s potential, but wasn’t immediately prepared to take it on at the asking price of some $4 million.
“I’d just built this project in Santa Monica … and I just didn’t think I was up for this. But then the price kept coming down. Nobody could figure out what to do with this,” he said.
A longtime architect and developer in the Washington, D.C. area, Mr. Dunn has lived seasonally on the Vineyard since 1971 and now makes the Island his year-round home.
Mr. Dunn’s completed developments here include Woodland Center on State Road in Vineyard Haven, the Barn Bowl and Bistro in Oak Bluffs, Tisbury Marketplace and the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center, built in 2012 for the Martha’s Vineyard Film Society.
His mixed-use proposal for the Old Stone Bank won unanimous approval from the Martha’s Vineyard Commission in 2021, although the commission has modified its enthusiasm in several subsequent hearings held to consider changes from his original plan.
While these modifications were approved in the end, the hearings grew testy at times, with commissioners charging that during construction Mr. Dunn repeatedly departed from the designs and materials they initially approved.
The project, and Mr. Dunn himself, have also come in for some public opposition, much of it in comments on news websites and social media.
“I always remind people [that] people stood out on the street for a year and protested the roundabout. The roundabout, really. You’ve got to weather some ruffled feathers,” he said, recalling the furor when Oak Bluffs installed the traffic measure over objections from all five of the other towns on the Island.
The taqueria at Stone Bank was another contentious modification, receiving close scrutiny for its seating capacity, wastewater flow, waste management and noise control before commissioners voted 7-3 in its favor last year.
On Tuesday, contractors were working on El Barco’s outdoor bar, located next to what had been the bank’s drive-through window in the annex building.
Stripped of its money-handling equipment, the drive-through window remains intact and could potentially become an indoor-outdoor fish tank, Mr. Dunn said.
Retractable metal awnings, already installed in a mechanized pergola above the seating area, can be extended to protect diners from the rain, he said.
“At the push of a button, they all close,” Mr. Dunn said.
Elsewhere around the complex, a new owner was moving into a two-story, bright yellow residential condo with a reverse floor plan and a wrap-around view from the second floor.
Mr. Dunn and his wife are also living at Stone Bank, where they’ve joined two units to create a double apartment with balconies, lofts and wide windows overlooking the harbor.
Recording engineer Andy Herr’s new studio is nearby, on the ground floor, and Mr. Dunn also shares one of the office condos with his son.
The next phase of the Stone Bank project is the planned sit-down restaurant in the old bank lobby, which currently is being stripped to its studs.
The domed ceiling, stained-glass panels, huge arched windows and heavy woodwork call for a fine dining experience, Mr. Dunn said, but he has yet to team up with a restaurateur as he has with El Barco owner Patrick Lyons.
“I’ll be permitting and building it, and looking for partners [and] chefs as we go along,” Mr. Dunn told the Gazette.
“I just love doing this,” he said. “It’s all I care about doing.”
Click here to see more photos of the project.
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