High-ranking state officials associated with the office of Gov. Paul Cellucci put heavy pressure on members of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission in an unabashed attempt to win votes in favor of the Meetinghouse Golf Club project in Edgartown, the Gazette has learned.
The commission rejected the golf club project by a one-vote margin three months ago.
A longtime member of the commission who has been a governor’s appointed member for 20 years admitted this week that she was pressured by a high-ranking state official to vote in favor of the Meetinghouse Golf project.
Ending months of debate, untold numbers of hours of public testimony and weeks of bruising deliberations, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission voted 7 to 6 last night to deny a proposal for a private 18-hole golf club on some 200 acres of land along the Edgartown Great Pond.
The developers who recently lost their bid to build a private golf club on some 200 acres of land along the Edgartown Great Pond intend to file a new plan and try again.
“We are neither dead nor finished,” declared a letter sent to the founding members of the Meeting House Golf Club one day after the plan was voted down by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission.
The letter was sent by mail and by fax to 30 seasonal residents of the Vineyard who advanced some $2 million in start-up money for the failed golf course project.
Developers at a hearing last night described the Meeting House Golf Club project as a blessing for the environment. The project would remove nitrogen from the groundwater, they said, improve the salinity of the Edgartown Great Pond and protect the rare plant known as gypsywort.
Some members of the public questioned those claims. And two opponents of the project hinted that scientific experts will appear, when the hearing continues, to offer different ideas about the environmental impacts of the golf resort proposed by Rosario Lattuca.
Officials from the YMCA presented their application to build a 39,000-foot addition, adding an indoor basketball court, exercise studios, indoor track and a golf simulator to the existing facility.
The Martha’s Vineyard Commission this week unanimously approved the Island Food Pantry’s plan for a permanent move to 114-116 Dukes County avenue in Oak Bluffs.
Biochar is created by burning branches and other wood waste in a contained environment. It has a range of beneficial uses that include enriching the soil and reducing the risk of wildfire.
The Martha’s Vineyard Commission this week agreed to allow three previously-denied fireplaces at a mixed-use condominium complex in downtown Vineyard Haven, in exchange for the developer’s pledge to allow no further propane appliances anywhere on the property.
Island Grown Initiative seeks to move its food pantry to Dukes County avenue in Oak Bluffs, while in Vineyard Haven, landowner Michael Sawyer is applying to replace a demolished building on Lagoon Pond Road with two four-story apartments.
Brothers Paul S. Bangs, James D. Bangs and Charles D. Bangs are asking to create six 3.95-acre building lots and one 1.37-acre affordable housing lot, along with a 1.22-acre right of way, on their late father Stuart Bangs’s woodlot that stretches from Old Coach Road to Nip ’n’ Tuck Lane.
