Pennywise Path Development: Pressure from Many Directions

By MANDY LOCKE

Neighbors are pleading for restraint, Edgartown officials are urging
confidence and regional planners are demanding more answers.

Pressures are coming from many directions as Martha's Vineyard
Commission members scrutinize the Pennywise Path Project - the
most ambitious affordable housing project proposal to hit the Vineyard.

The Pennywise Path project, 60 units of affordable rental units
slated for 12-acres of town-owned land, brings many firsts to the
Island. For starters, town officials are driving this rental
development. Pennywise Path, if approved, would bring the largest family
apartment complex to an Island with more than 15,000 single-family
homes. At 60 units, it's double the size of the largest family
affordable housing development previously proposed for the Island.

Town officials have partnered with The Community Builders (TCB), a
Boston-based nonprofit development company. Twelve acres of town land
will be leased to TCB, and the company will finance, build and manage
this $11.3-million project. The town and TCB are applying for permits
under Chapter 40B, a state law which allows developers to skirt certain
local zoning restrictions if a quarter of the housing stock is
affordable.

This project has been in the town's incubator for more than
three years. It all started in 1999, when Edgartown leaders, along with
the Martha's Vineyard Land Bank, purchased 180 acres of rolling
woodland in the town's northwest corridor for $2.7 million. The
town owns the entire tract, and the land bank has a conservation
restriction over 118 acres of the property. In 2001, Edgartown voters
designated 12 acres of the remaining town land for development of
affordable housing.

The units will take the form of traditional New England-style
buildings resembling farmhouses and barns. Three clusters will surround
central green space, and a five-acre recreation area will be constructed
between Pennywise Path project and their residential neighbors in
Arbutus Park.

Flanked by conservation land, a private luxury golf course and a
thickly-settled neighborhood, Pennywise Path project would chip away at
the town's pressing affordable housing shortage, officials said.
Edgartown residents get first call on 70 per cent of the units. Once
those units are filled, residents of all six Vineyard towns can apply
for the remaining 30 per cent.

The degree of local preference Edgartown officials can guarantee has
been a sticking point. Because the project relies on a number of state
and federal subsidies, federal and state officials can exert some
control over occupant selection.

"I feel like this project is potentially fatally flawed if it
doesn't provide for local preference," said James Athearn,
MVC chairman to Edgartown leaders and TCB officials last Thursday night
at a commission public hearing review, asking for selection criteria.
"It could quickly fill up with nominal residents instead of really
serving the needs of the community if the residency requirements
aren't deep."

"Jim, we are not prepared to give you that right now. You have
to make a certain leap of faith that we'll take care of our own.
This project hit a stall not so long ago when we weren't certain
we could [enforce local preference]," Alan Gowell, a member of the
town's affordable housing committee, told commissioners Thursday
night.

State housing officials, however, gave town leaders the go-ahead
this spring to fill the units with Vineyard residents, and more
specifically, Edgartown citizens.

"We told them that little communities like ours are not going
to build affordable housing unless we can take care of our native
children first," Mr. Gowell affirmed in a phone conversation with
the Gazette yesterday.

Neighborhood Concerns

Twelfth street will serve as the gateway to the Pennywise Path
project, and Arbutus Park residents aren't quite ready to roll out
the red carpet.

They want a toned-down version of the project: fewer units, more
than one road into the project, and some ownership units mixed in with
the rentals.

And they don't want to hear any excuses about limited
financial means.

"In a town with a beautification committee which can find
people willing to pay to put utility poles underground and gentrify the
whole town, we can't find enough money to build an affordable
housing development that works for the town," said Steve Ewing, a
resident of 16th street. "This development could pit the same
working class families you are trying to serve against one
another."

Other neighbors echoed that refrain.

"The residents of Arbutus Park don't have a real estate
lawyer on retainer or a trained public relations department. We
don't have working relationships with environmental scientists,
traffic or groundwater experts," said David Montambault, a
resident of 14th street. "Our hope is that the Martha's
Vineyard Commission will look past the window dressing of playgrounds,
nonprofit and community building and review the long-term impact of this
development on affordable housing and the communities of Martha's
Vineyard."

Mr. Gowell described the challenge of how addressing one
neighbor's concern can exacerbate the complaint of another.

"This whole project is one of trying to reach compromise.
We're trying to make this palatable to the neighborhood while
addressing this pressing need," said Mr. Gowell.

Officials abandoned an earlier version of the project which relied
upon Jernegan avenue as the sole access to the project after those
residents "pressed upon [officials] how densely settled the street
is and how many kids live there."

The town is now pursuing a second access road to the project along
Metcalf Drive, which runs off Edgartown-West Tisbury Road. About a mile
down Metcalf Drive, a new road would be created to run behind the
Vineyard Golf Club, along a preserve managed by the Martha's
Vineyard Land Bank.

Because that land is permanently protected by a conservation
restriction, the town will need permission from state legislators to use
it.

In exchange for lifting a restriction on 1.4 acres of protected
land, the town will place a conservation restriction over seven acres of
land near the development site. This seven acres encompasses an
environmentally sensitive frost pocket.

While town leaders say they have full confidence that state
legislators will sign off on the modification, a Vineyard conservation
leader has urged commissioners against altering the restriction.

Brendan O'Neill, Vineyard Conservation Society executive
director, said it's a matter of principle: "Converting
permanent conservation land creates a bad precedent which no amount of
compensatory offset of additional land can cure. As an organization
whose mission includes drafting these MGL Ch. 184 conservation
restrictions, we can testify that such bad precedents detrimentally
affect our ability to protect land using [conservation
restrictions]."

Mr. O'Neill also warned that the Metcalf Drive access will
entice neighbors to cut through the Pennywise Path neighborhood from
Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road to the West Tisbury Road in order to avoid
the congested Triangle area. Residents of Dodgers Hole know that
temptation all too well. Their neighborhood has long been a shortcut for
Island drivers, and residents this past winter discussed installing a
gate to curb the abuse.

TCB said they are ready and willing to install traffic mitigators
- stop signs, speed humps and the like - to address any
cut-through motorists.

"It would be foolish to stymie this development and this
access because of a bad precedent," said Mr. Gowell.

Environmental Concerns

The Pennywise Path Project would sit right in the middle of an area
deemed a priority habitat in a 2003 map produced by the state Natural
Heritage and Endangered Species Program.

The implications of this are not quite clear, but ecologist Wendy
Culbert told commissioners that the most sensitive areas of the property
occur in pockets and are not stretched across the land.

"Instead of making a map that looked like Swiss cheese, they
included the entire matrix in which [these areas] occurred," said
Ms. Culbert.

Ms. Culbert, who reviewed the property in 2002 for the town, said
she does not imagine the development will infringe on rare or endangered
species.

The state Executive Office of Environmental Affairs awarded a
certificate of the environmental notification form and waived the
requirement for an Environmental Impact Report.

"We've been given the green light from state to proceed
on an environmental basis," Mr. Gowell said yesterday.

Economic Factors

The financial viability of this project relies on a balance of state
and federal funding. This drives the density of the project and also has
forced the developer to eliminate one of the income brackets previously
served in the project outline.

"The darn economics of rental housing is why we need so many
units. We're a nonprofit developer - you are not going to
see the developer kickback that you hear about so often," said
Peter Freeman, counsel for TCB.

Last week, the developer stripped the project of units reserved for
those Islanders earning between 60 and 110 per cent of county median
income. Now, the project serves those earning below 60 per cent of
median income, $39,660 for a family of four, as well as those families
earning between 110 and 140 per cent of median income, or $72,710 to
$92,540 for a family of four.

Monthly rents, which include utilities, will range from $252 to
$1,785 for a two-bedroom unit.

Mr. Gowell said yesterday that the town's affordable housing
committee will work to reinstate units for those families in the middle
economic bracket.

The Martha's Vineyard Commission has continued its public
hearing review on Pennywise Path to July 1.