| 
Local developers Josh Posner and Jamie Feeley are seeking to build dozens of new homes and condos on a 13-acre site, 20 percent of which would be sold or rented out at below market rates.
Dotted with palatial estates erected by 21st century robber barons, Nantucket is nothing if not a testament to the power of modern capitalism to generate unseemly gobs of cold, harsh cash.
But while engaging in the most rapacious forms of profit mongering are apparently fine off–island, Nantucket apparently has a very different code for what’s allowable on this playpen for the fabulously rich.
The billionaires and millionaires who make the island their home – at least during the sunny summer months – would rather not have their down time sullied by exercise of the profit principle, even in the service of a good cause; in this case, new housing.
Just take the furor over the proposal by a pair of hometown developers, Josh Posner and Jamie Feeley, to build dozens of new homes and condominiums on a 13-acre site, 20 percent of which would be sold or rented out at below market rates under the state’s Chapter 40B affordable housing law.
Faced with a backlash that saw 700 people turn out for a hearing last fall on the project, the developers have just reduced the number of units to 100, down by roughly a third from the original count of 156.
Word is, developers and their families have also faced harassment from project opponents as well.
Opponents Decry ‘Unchecked Development’
The Nantucket Land Council all but called the pair turncoats in a statement on its website.
“It is doubly distressing that the developers are local residents Josh Posner and Jamie Feeley of Cottage and Castle, who are disrespecting their island neighbors and community to maximize personal gain,” the group fumed.
Nantucket Tipping Point, a group formed to battle the development has a long screed on its website blasting the developers for supposedly seeking outsized profits.
To read the nonsense on the group’s website, you’d think little Nantucket is undergoing a Manhattan-sized building boom, with the proposed Surfside Crossing “the latest, gravest threat to our community.”
Gain Access to New England Premier Source for Real Estate Data
Real estate is a moving target, but with a valuable tool like RE Records Search in your arsenal, you can get a bullseye every time. The Warren Group is New England’s premier source for timely and accurate real estate data, and RE Records Search provides valuable insight to the region’s property characteristics, tax records, sales and mortgage histories, and foreclosure information.
“Nantucket has reached a tipping-point where unchecked development threatens the health, safety and wellbeing of its residents and visitors in profound and irreversible ways,” the group argues.
The objections thrown out against the project are too numerous to detail, including “light pollution,” but Surfside’s supposedly monstrous size appears to be one of central objections.
One hundred and fifty-six homes and condos on 13 acres – roughly the size of Fenway Park – hardly seems excessive, and that was before the whole project was downsized to 100 units.
Yes, it’s density you are more likely to see in suburban communities, but with 60 percent of the island off–limits thanks to golf courses, palatial estates and conservation restrictions, land on the island is scarce, especially for housing.
In the interest of keeping as much of Nantucket as open and bucolic as possible, larger, denser developments would seem to be a logical way to deal with the decades-long utter lack of reasonably-priced housing on the island.
Frankly, there are lots of oceanside estates on Nantucket that chew up that much land and more, but I don’t see islanders out there trying to storm the gates of the various luxury compounds.
Scott Van Voorhis
Little Affordable Housing on Nantucket
The housing struggles of working– and middle–class families who keep the hospital running, the schools teaching and the restaurants humming don’t even appear to be an afterthought for all those angry and entitled opponents of Surfside Crossing.
You can make as much as $160,000 a year on Nantucket and still not be able to afford to put a roof over your head on an island where the median home price is $1.5 million, affordable housing advocates say.
Less than 3 percent of Nantucket’s housing meets the definition of affordable under the state’s Chapter 40B law, which sets a minimum threshold of 10 percent.
Nantucket is hardly in danger of getting paved over with new development, or at least not of the kind Surfside Crossing developers are proposing.
Renovations and construction of big estates and other pricey property has fueled a construction boom on the island, with tradesman and women commuting in by ferry each day to go to work on an island they can’t afford to live on.
Here’s a suggestion for opponents. Stop trying to run off the island any developer who has the nerve to proposes housing that isn’t just yet another robber baron estate or multimillion-dollar “cottage.”
Instead, work to boost the island’s percentage of affordable housing up to the 10 percent minimum before you complain.
But stop pretending that Nantucket is in danger of getting paved over.
It’s not and you know it.
Scott Van Voorhis is Banker & Tradesman’s columnist; opinions expressed are his own. He may be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.
