The Edgartown planning board voted unanimously Tuesday night to approve the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital’s Navigator Homes skilled nursing facility and workforce housing development.
The project, which cleared Martha’s Vineyard Commission approval in November, still must pass muster with the town wastewater commission and building department.
Wastewater has been a main sticking point throughout the review of the project.
Planning board members Glen Searle and Scott Morgan, who previously had sided with neighbors opposed to the project, gave it their support after the board agreed on a series of conditions including an agreement to tie into the town sewer and a commitment to plant and maintain a screening border along the property line with current abutters.
“All of my questions and objections have been answered . . . At this point I’m okay with everything,” Mr. Morgan said during deliberations after the board’s public hearing online.
“This is a really well put together project,” board member Mike McCourt said. “I don’t think that we could ask for any more.”
Mr. Searle advised the applicants to “play well with the neighbors.”
Neighbors of the undeveloped property on the Vineyard Haven Road have said the complex is too large and dense for the area.
But with fewer than 70 skilled nursing beds and 48 housing units on 28 acres — more than 16 of which will remain open space — the proposed development will be less dense than the abutting Teaberry Lane neighborhood, Navigator Homes president David McDonough argued.
“One could argue this is a better use of land,” Mr. McDonough said.
Board chair Lucy Morrison, Navigator Homes attorney Geoghan Coogan and planning board administrator Doug Finn agreed to finalize the language of the conditions before the board signs its decision March 6.
“We as a board have done everything we can in our power to make it as good for us and for Edgartown as we can,” Ms. Morrison said.
