The Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank added a key waterfront parcel to its holdings this week with the purchase of a 21-acre peninsula on the Edgartown Great Pond.
The 21-acre property will be closed for a year for ecology study and a management plan.
— Graham Smith
The land bank paid $8 million for the property at at Quenomica Point in the rural coastal perimeters of Edgartown. The property includes nearly seven tenths of a mile of shore frontage. The seller is John O’Keefe. The closing was Monday.
Land bank executive director James Lengyel said a small house on the property will be evaluated for future use during a year-long environmental study of the property for a management plan.
He said the parcel had long been on the land bank’s list of priority properties.
“The land bank always prizes beautiful waterfront properties,” Mr. Lengyel told the Gazette by phone Tuesday. “This has been on the land bank’s radar since probably 1989 or 1990.”
The Island’s only public conservation organization, the land bank protects open space, farmland, scenic viewsheds and aquifers using funds from a two per cent transfer fee on most arm’s-length real estate transactions. The land bank is midway through another year of record-breaking revenues, as a booming real estate market continues unabated on Martha’s Vineyard.
Mr. Lengyel said the land bank paid cash for the Quenomica Point property.
As the land bank does with all its purchases, the property will be closed to the public for a year so an ecologist can study the land and develop a land management plan, he said.
“The idea is that we want to get to know the property very well before we draft a management plan,” he said.
A walking trail, trailhead and launching point for kayaks going to and from Wilson’s Landing are all preliminary plans for the property, according to Mr. Lengyel.
The purchase marks the land bank’s largest since November, when it completed a 6.6-acre purchase on James Pond, according to Mr. Lengyel. In September the land bank bought 31.8 acres on Squibnocket Pond for $10 million, completing the purchase of Red Gate Farm in Aquinnah that began last year in partnership with the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation.
A management plan for that property is nearing completion.
The land bank owns one other property on the Great Pond: Edgartown Great Pond Beach, which can only be reached by canoe or kayak from Wilson’s landing.
