Despite lingering concerns about the size, density and effect on a residential neighborhood, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission on Thursday approved the multifaceted Bradley Square project at the corner of Dukes County and Masonic avenues in Oak Bluffs by a nearly unanimous vote.

Calling it a test of town priorities, the executive director of the Island Affordable Housing Fund this week asked the Oak Bluffs Community Preservation Committee to commit another $400,000 to the financially troubled Bradley Square project, in the name of historic preservation.

Three years after the Island Affordable Housing Fund saved the historic Denniston House in Oak Bluffs from demolition, it is applying for a permit from the Oak Bluffs historic commission to raze the building.

If the effort to save the Denniston House in Oak Bluffs was a thorny process, demolishing it may prove just as difficult. In a unanimous vote, the Oak Bluffs historical commission determined on Wednesday that the old house meets the definition of a historically significant building.

The Denniston house was issued a stay of execution this week as Oak Bluffs residents and officials railed at the prospect of losing a part of Island history.

Aiming to preserve the Denniston House, home to the Island’s first African-American church, the Island Affordable Housing Fund this week announced a partnership with the Martha’s Vineyard chapter of the NAACP to raise the money needed to pay off the mortgage on the Bradley Square property in Oak Bluffs in the next six months.

T. Ewell Hopkins, executive director of the fund, said his organization owes about $700,000 on a note with the Martha’s Vineyard Savings Bank. The property is located on the corner of Dukes County and Masonic avenues.

The historic Denniston House on Masonic avenue in Oak Bluffs was sold at a public foreclosure auction yesterday for $500,000 to a well-known Oak Bluffs architect, marking a final chapter in the Martha’s Vineyard Housing Fund’s troubled ownership of the property.

The Martha’s Vineyard Commission decided this week to move forward with a public hearing on the proposed demolition of the Denniston House in Oak Bluffs regardless of the timetable for other town committees.