Final West Tisbury Buildout Adds 3,000 Citizens to the Population

By MANDY LOCKE

West Tisbury's development spurt in the 1970s felt more like a
surge to the year-round community of 500 living in the up-Island rural
township.

The fast and furious growth, which tripled the housing stock and
nearly quadrupled the permanent population, loomed over West
Tisbury's 17,372 acres through the 1980s. And the townspeople
watched beloved farmland, which made up nearly half of the entire town
in 1950, dwindle from 710 acres in 1970 to just under 500 by 1990.

Somehow, the town still managed to look rural.

"We still have the great vistas. There are a lot more homes,
but there's still open land. The homes are just tucked behind
roadways," planning board member Susan Silva said.

When the town of West Tisbury received 300 requests to carve out
house lots in a single month in the early 1970s, the town fought back
with three-quarter-acre zoning. When the limit did little to curb growth
- the average number of building permits jumped from 28 a year in
the 1970s to 82 in the 1980s - the town expanded the minimum lot
size to three acres.

Complex and serious development issues remain before the town,
according to a recent buildout analysis completed by the state Executive
Office of Environmental Affairs and delivered to each Island community
this year.

The remaining 4,609 acres of virgin soil in West Tisbury could
support as many as 1,289 more homes in the years to come, and that
translates to 3,000 more seasonal and year-round residents in the
up-Island town. Those new families would funnel 330 additional students
into West Tisbury's schools. The new residents could drain as much
as 160 million additional gallons a day from the Island's aquifer.

"It's frightening, but not unrealistic," Ms. Silva
said. "The question is when."

The answer is tough to forecast.

With a two-year building cap of 42 annual permits that expired last
spring, the only growth limit in the town of West Tisbury comes from a
20 per cent annual rate of development for any approved subdivisions, no
more than eight dwellings developed in one subdivision each year. The
looming question becomes how many developments, and the answer cannot be
found within the town's 84 pages of zoning bylaws.

As of 1989, at least 80 tracts of land larger than 20 acres sat
untouched within the town. Officials suspect that stock shrank at least
by half in the last 13 years.

But the town knows of about 40 large chunks of West Tisbury land
left and that a large portion will be shielded from further subdivision
because of the desirability of large estates. Much of this land lies
along the North Shore.

"If somebody buys a 10-acre parcel on Paul's Point for
$15 million, they will not be slicing it. They are in it for the
privacy," West Tisbury board of health agent John Powers said.

Many of the 4,609 remaining acres exist on paper only -
landlocked between surrounding parcels and with little chance of
securing easement, zoning board of appeals chairman Eric Whitman said.

These days, development pressures have cooled just enough for town
officials to take off the boxing gloves. No definitive subdivision
applications have made it to the planning board in the last two years,
and only 18 subdivisions with a total of 151 homes were approved in the
1990s. A set of progressive zoning bylaws, adopted in 2000, pushes any
development coming down the pipeline to incorporate open space and
affordable housing into new projects.

Fear of suburbanization in West Tisbury - an anxiety that
arrived well before America had a word to define cookie-cutter
neighborhoods - caused town leaders to adopt flexible development
zoning, bylaws that encourage developers to steer toward cluster zoning.

"When we had our community profile weekend, the two main
issues that came up were conflicting - open space and affordable
housing," Ms. Silva said.

Cluster zoning, which incorporates open space, follows the lay of
the land rather than three-acre slices. With new zoning bylaws,
developers receive density incentive for more open space and affordable
housing contributions.

All may be quiet in the planning board office in West Tisbury, but
the zoning board of appeals continues to see a volume of applications,
primarily requests for expansions.

"We see a lot of people who bought a piece of land for $10,000
in the 1970s, property that would sell for $250,000 today. They put in
the house when they didn't have much money, and now they want to
expand a bit," Mr. Whitman said.

A strong spirit of making do with what exists resonates through many
other building trends in West Tisbury. The sweeping new zoning
regulations in 2000 opened up previously unbuildable lots for affordable
homes. A stock of nearly 500 substandard lots sat idly because they fell
shy of the 1986 three-acre zoning. Almost 100 of those parcels,
according to zoning board of appeals member and West Tisbury builder
Tucker Hubbell, are now available for development of affordable housing.

"The bylaw says that if you are willing to sell them
affordably, you can get some of your money back [out of the property
investment]," Mr. Whitman said.

West Tisbury, like other Island towns, feels the pressures of
conservation and affordable housing butting against one another.

"Those of us on the environmental front are very aware of the
housing need. We don't want to be the bad guys saying ‘no
you can't build,' but if it will harm the wetlands, we
must," conservation commission chairwoman Judy Crawford said.

"We try and balance the homeowners' rights and the
law," she added.

West Tisbury has reviewed a number of requests to build on
substandard lots that are marginal because of water availability and
septic system issues.

"When you get to the bottom of the barrel, you see lots that
have some issues," Mr. Powers said.

But West Tisbury - pinched by land values soaring above a
half-million dollars for single-family dwellings - sees many land
owners fighting the urge to sell out or subdivide as tax rates and cost
of living continue to climb. The building pressure causes an uncertainty
in planning as West Tisbury approaches capacity.

"It's sad when people are forced to sell out because of
inheritance or affordability pressures. It's a very emotional
process," Ms. Silva said.

"In the meantime, we're just being the best stewards of
the land that we can be," she added.