The Martha’s Vineyard Commission opened a public hearing Thursday on a nearly-completed house in Vineyard Haven that has become a lightning rod for neighborhood opposition.
The Islandwide planning agency took in more than two hours of testimony on developer Xerxes Aghassipour’s nine-bedroom project at 97 Spring street. No decisions were made and the commission will resume the hearing on April 4.
The MVC review was requested by the Tisbury planning board and the town’s board of health, after the commission’s executive director Adam Turner, previously told the Tisbury zoning board of appeals that the building did not qualify as a development of regional impact.
Commissioners overturned Mr. Turner’s decision last November, voting 10-4 to review the project.
Hearing officer Doug Sederholm said Thursday that this is the MVC’s first so-called “discretionary review” — as opposed to one triggered by specific elements of the project — since the commission took up the hotly-debated Oak Bluffs roundabout in 2011.
“This is a sort of unicorn for us, because we rarely have discretionary referrals that are accepted,” Mr. Sederholm said.
The project has been controversial in Tisbury, and two MVC members, Ben Robinson and Bernadette Cormie, recused themselves as commissioners because Mr. Aghassipour is suing them.
The lawsuit, filed last month in Dukes County Superior Court, names Mr. Robinson, as a member of the Tisbury planning board, along with planning board administrator Amy Upton and both Ms. Cormie and her husband Leigh Cormie, who live next door to 97 Spring street.
Mr. Aghassipour asserts that the four conspired against him to derail the Spring street project and undermine his other planned developments on the Island.
Ms. Cormie is also suing the Mr. Aghassipour and the town over the project.
While recusing themselves as commissioners, both Mr. Robinson and Ms. Cormie took part in Thursday’s public hearing, speaking briefly in their non-MVC capacities.
Mr. Robinson said Tisbury building procedures gave the planning board no direct role in approving the Spring street project, which received a building permit as a single-family residence.
Ms. Cormie, who spoke at the end of the meeting after a dozen other members of the public, said she would reserve her remarks until the hearing continues.
Ten other neighbors of the Spring street house also addressed the commission, every one of them opposed to the prospect of Mr. Aghassipour leasing it to an Island employer as workforce housing.
A Tisbury bylaw that limits homes from being rented to more than five unrelated people came up often at the hearing.
“By no common-sense definition is a single family [made up of] people who work for the same corporation,” said Bryan Gordon, testifying by Zoom during the hybrid meeting.
“This is like a frat house,” said Tammy King, who told the commission by Zoom that she believes developers are forcing changes in Tisbury’s residential neighborhoods.
“These things don’t happen in Edgartown and up Island,” Ms. King said.
Testifying in person, former commissioner Dave Ferraguzzi said the MVC should not review the project at all.
“The Martha’s Vineyard Commission needs to back off on this issue, because this is a Tisbury issue, not a regional issue,” said Mr. Ferraguzzi, who served on the MVC in the 1980s.
“This building will not meet town zoning regulations as a single family residence,” he said.
Mr. Aghassipour said if that rule is applied to 97 Spring street, the town will have to enforce it for all shared residences in Tisbury.
“They have to apply that rule fairly across the board,” he said.
“You can’t spot zone. You can’t selectively enforce. That’s unlawful,” Mr. Aghassipour said.
Other Tisbury residents who spoke at Thursday’s hearing expressed anxiety about noise, traffic and parking on Spring street, and said that if Mr. Aghassipour’s plan was not checked, other developers would follow suit around the Island.
Answering the concerns, Mr. Aghassipour said he would abide by any use for the home that Tisbury officials imposed, and that he is willing to make changes for the commission’s approval.
“We’d be open to limiting occupancy,” he said. “We’d be open to limit parking spaces.”
The new state law allowing accessory dwelling units would permit Mr. Aghassipour to create a separate rental apartment within the existing building, he said, which he might do if the number of residents in the rest of the building is limited.
Commissioners also heard Thursday from their consultant Eric Dray, who investigated the age of the previous house at 97 Spring street that was demolished for the new construction.
Town property records indicated the four-bedroom, two-bathroom house was built in 1925, placing it outside the 100-year threshold for mandatory pre-demolition review by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission.
A 1904 fire insurance map of Vineyard Haven shows a house with a very similar footprint at 97 Spring street, although Mr. Dray, an architectural historian, said it’s impossible to be completely certain that this was the same building Mr. Aghassipour purchased in 2022.
“It just would seem unlikely to me that … that a modest house would have been torn down in the mid-1920s and then rebuilt in an equally modest size,” Mr. Dray said.
He also told the commission that Mr. Aghassipour’s new house is not the largest in the neighborhood, although it is the second largest, and that its design is not out of step with others in the area.
“I do find it to be in accord with the neighborhood,” Mr. Dray said.
“This is a heterogeneous streetscape, in my opinion,” he said.
The front of the house, however, would be improved with window shutters and a decorative surround for the front door, he said.
The front door of the new house is the one element remaining from the old building, Mr. Aghassipour said.
Also Thursday, commissioners granted a modification for the apartment complex in Oak Bluffs formerly known as Southern Tier, which is now going by the name Tackenash Knoll.
The unanimous vote allows Affirmative Investments, which is developing the mixed-income project, more time to identify private properties where the company can install high-tech septic systems at its own expense.
Affirmative Investments is required to install the systems to offset nitrogen produced by the 60-unit Tackenash Knoll complex, which sits in the Sengekontacket Pond watershed.
