A Boom Is Changing Edgartown (Again)

By MANDY LOCKE

The sound of hammers and saws pulses through downtown Edgartown.
Morning calm is broken by a foreman yelling instructions to a team of
roofers and by the beeping of a delivery truck backing into a driveway
with a load of lumber. A lane of traffic on Cooke street has become a
parking lot for workmen reporting to one of three project sites in a
single block near Pease's Point Way.

"It's looks like the Big Dig," said one
contractor, Norman Rankow.

A housing boom is jolting Edgartown's village center - a
surge in construction activity concentrated in 30 square blocks.
Architects, builders, pool installers and landscapers are rushing major
projects on 20 properties - far more than in any winter season in
memory. A building boom in a village that has essentially been built out
for decades means gutting, stripping, hauling away or simply tearing
down old houses; that's the case in 15 of these projects. What
then emerges, for the most part, are immaculate replications of period
homes - Colonials, Greek Revivals, Victorians - designed to
look as if they've been here a hundred years.

These new structures are bulkier, taller and closer to
neighbors' windows than the houses they replace.

In half of these current projects, the new house will be twice as
large as what was there before.

Some say this rash of construction activity is improving the town.
Some say it's changing the town, and not necessarily for the good.
Almost all say there's no going back.

"It's happening in a lot of communities built a long
time ago. People are buying mediocre and outdated properties and
rebuilding or entirely replacing what's there. And they're
spending a lot of money to do it. This is a different era," said
David Thompson, a real estate broker with LandVest and a Fuller street
resident.

"A lot of the homes seem too large, but it's all
perfectly legal. You might not be happy having two and a half stories
towering over your one-story bungalow, but that's the way it
is," said Peter Van Tassel, a downtown resident and member of the
historic district commission.

The surge in activity follows a pattern that has been slowly
spreading through downtown streets the last few winters. This
season's pace is expected to continue as downtown becomes more
attractive with each of these renovation projects.

"It's the classic New England port town, and it improves
all the time," Mr. Thompson said.

The result continues to hook deep-pocketed mainlanders shopping for
a seasonal Vineyard home.

"I liked that people hung out on the benches. It's so
cozy," said Barbara Jordan, who rented a house on North Water
street for many summers before buying another one nearby.

Ms. Jordan wanted her kids and grandchildren to walk to town for ice
cream whenever they wanted.

Scott Gieselman, former football player and Houston businessman,
likes the idea of keeping his car parked during weekend visits.

His summer guests can take the Pied Piper ferry to Memorial Wharf,
then walk to his Pease's Point Way house. In less than a 10-minute
stroll, Mr. Gieselman and his friends can be sunbathing at Fuller street
beach, having morning coffee at Espresso Love or enjoying dinner at one
of more than a dozen downtown restaurants; he could do none of this from
the Major's Cove house he owned until last year.

It's the Economy

Downtown's real estate market escaped any damage from the
crippled national economy; the stock market slump may, in fact, have
helped fuel this building boom.

"If you have money, plunking it down on Martha's
Vineyard, especially in-town Edgartown, is about as safe an investment
as you can make," said Mr. Thompson.

Rarely does a village property sell for less than $1 million. With
most new buyers tearing down or completely overhauling the house, that
price reflects land value alone.

Some of the new owners, having shopped for a home in other port
communities, say the steep prices are worth it.

"When we sold our first house in Edgartown [off Planting Field
Way], we looked off-Island, thinking there would be better values. But
when you compare the Cape to Martha's Vineyard, it's like
night and day. We felt that staying in Edgartown was a better
choice," said Jeff Clutterbuck, now building a new house on South
Summer street.

The purchase price is only the beginning. Even the smaller
construction projects cost $1 million, contractors said. Throw in a
carriage house and swimming pool, and the bottom line jumps to $2
million. Seven of these projects entail a pool; at least half have
carriage houses.

And as more and more homes are renovated, neighbors often follow
suit, embarking on projects of their own.

"It's a chain reaction, a domino effect. When someone
renovates a property, a neighbor is not afraid to make that kind of
investment," Mr. Rankow said.

Cost may be irrelevant to many new buyers. They want all the extras
- the pool, the three-car garage, the cobblestone pavers, the
playroom, the seven-foot privet hedges, the detached bedroom. They order
as much as they can fit on these postage-stamp size lots.

"Up until the 1990s when there started to be this mad
accumulation of money, people still paid attention to what things cost.
Now, it doesn't seem to matter. Kids used to have bunk rooms, now
they have en-suite bedrooms," Mr. Thompson said.

Ample houses on small lots, of course, has been the pattern of
development in downtown dating back to the whaling days. Until the late
1980s, when the town adopted a 10,000 square-foot minimum lot
requirement in the village, downtown had been divided into 5,000
square-foot lots. Five-foot setbacks now apply to the sides and rear
property lines, and houses need to be in line with neighboring houses or
meet a 20-foot front setback. Newer houses often push the limits of the
lot, filling in yard space with all the extras.

"Pretty soon, when you walk downtown, it will all be asphalt.
The Island will one day sink with all the granite paving stones,"
said Margaret Steele, co-chairman of the historic district commission
and a resident of Cottage street.

The Renovation Game

The three-story colonial now perched on 132 South Water street looks
nothing like the one-story bungalow that sat atop the hill for the last
century. But the building department called the work that Colonial
Reproductions planned a renovation.

Permits for new single family homes are a precious commodity in
Edgartown these days. The town has limited the number of building
permits issued annually, and contractors compete in a lottery drawing
each month for one of the 84 permits available this year.

Mr. Rankow, owner of Colonial Reproductions, didn't want to
wait. So, instead, he called his project a renovation and tweaked his
building plans to meet the required standards. So long as Mr. Rankow
agreed to salvage a quarter of the existing house's exterior walls
and keep the same number of bedrooms, the job qualified as a renovation.
(He also kept his name in the new construction lottery, and his name
eventually came up. Ironically, by then workmen had installed some of
the old walls in the new structure. Getting the permit, however, did
allow him to increase the number of bedrooms to five.)

"Is the building cap working? No, people find a way to move
ahead with their work," Mr. Rankow said.

Mr. Rankow - who along with Michael Donaroma built this house
on speculation - knew it would be a headache to save much of the
old 1,300 square-foot house. Like many village homes built around the
turn of the last century, it was showing its age.

"The house was simply not salvageable. It had been added onto
so many times," he said.

"Restoring old houses is sometimes a double-edged sword. When
you are working with a dilapidated house, the cost of reconstruction is
more than starting from scratch. The rest gets torn down because
it's not worth it. It's simply cheaper to rebuild,"
Mr. Rankow said.

Many embarking on major restoration projects in downtown typically
find more challenges than they bargained for. Bug infestation, dry rot
and weak underpinnings are common. Deferred maintenance is to blame, and
the new buyers are paying dearly.

The plumbing in Ms. Jordan's North Water street house,
formerly a captain's shop, was so antiquated, she said, that only
one person could shower at a time. She envisioned tearing out a large
section of the existing house, saving one wing and adding on another
section. But once her contractor opened up the house, he found fractured
support beams and plenty of rot. Fitting the old wing to the new
addition became a restoration headache, she said.

Gary Maynard of Holmes Hole Builders, too, has a restoration
challenge on his hands. Launching work on the interior of an 1838 house
on School street, his crew found a crumbled foundation. The house,
formerly a Baptist church, now sits on stilts. The inside work is on
hold until the new foundation is installed.

"It's unavoidable. You are throwing good money after bad
if you don't work on the underpinnings. You have to deal with the
underlying issues," said Mr. Maynard. His client was already
committed to an interior overhaul as well as ripping out some
historically inaccurate features added during prior renovations.

"It's like the tiger by the tail syndrome. You jump in
feet first. Once it gets going, you just have to hang on," said
Mr. Maynard.

Where We're Headed

It is now inevitable, some say, that something dramatic is about to
happen to a property the moment it comes on the market.

"Doesn't anybody ever buy a house anymore and leave it
alone?" asked historic district commissioner Andrew Leslie during
a meeting last month. He already knew the answer.

Lately, every applicant before the commission is seeking permission
to give the old home a facelift. They want attics as living space, new
second-story decks with a water view, a backyard carriage house.

The alterations come one property, one request at a time - one
tree cut, one water view blocked, one more curb cut. Several property
owners this year sought permission from selectmen to take down town
shade trees because the footprint of the new house encroached upon them.

"People are maximizing their square footage on these small
lots. They're wanting to replace these trees with what they think
is a perfect tree in a spot that they choose," said Stuart Fuller,
Edgartown tree warden, who is responsible for more than 900 shade trees
the town once planted. The town has no say over removal of any other
trees on private property.

In the house itself, what is lost along the way, some say, are the
bumps and warts that tell two hundred years' worth of stories.

"When the houses are redone, they lose some of their
character. It loses its sags. I like all the bumps - they are like
lines on someone's face," said Tommy Fisher, a lifelong
resident of downtown Edgartown. "You really can't build
something that looks old. You really can't. It becomes like a
movie set. Something is lost."

That something - Arthur Railton, a 30-year resident of South
Summer street, said - is charm.

"Each of these little things extract some of the charm. Pretty
soon, we'll be toothless," Mr. Railton said.

But alarm over lost character typically subsides, Mr. Rankow said,
when the construction is complete and a showcase historic reproduction
remains.

"There is sensitivity because it's new. It's the
shock value of us going in, making a mess and making a lot of noise. But
if we've done a good job, a year later, people drive by and think
it fits right in," said Mr. Rankow.

No one disputes that, by and large, downtown looks better these
days. The beautification, they agree, is due in large part to newcomers
undertaking renovation jobs on neglected properties.

"Thirty years ago, there were many more haunted houses -
derelict houses, obviously in need of a paint job. Now, some people are
thinking these houses are a little too well maintained," said Mr.
Van Tassel.

It is a difficult balance to strike, Ms. Steele said.

"There's a tightrope walk between preserving the
character of the historic downtown and letting [the new property owners]
create a home," she said.

And many understand that as much as they'd like to see the
turn-of-the-century cottages and 1950s bungalows forever be a part of
village landscape, the value of the land beneath them is too great a
lure. So, those mourning the changes to downtown carefully pick their
battles.

"The town can't be preserved in amber. It's a
living, growing, breathing town. We just need to make sure that as
things happen, it happens in a harmonious way," said Ms. Steele.