West Tisbury has a serious dilemma on its hands, and largely of its own making.

Howes House, an old former residence in the middle of the town’s historic district, that since the early ‘90s has housed the Up-Island Council on Aging, serving also Chilmark and Aquinnah, is in rather desperate need of an updating. It was renovated and expanded at the time to serve the council on aging, but the work didn’t completely address accessibility and what are now code compliance issues.

Parts of the building are inaccessible to the elderly, and the entire second floor is unusable not having been renovated to begin with. Plus there is over 30 years of wear-and-tear from intense use.

Everyone pretty much agrees work has to be done. Beyond that there has been little agreement, and now an impasse.

And it’s not as if West Tisbury doesn’t know how to renovate or build municipal buildings. In the past 15 years West Tisbury has successfully renovated the town hall, expanded the library, and built a new police station and a highway department headquarters. One would think after all that a mere Howes House renovation would be a piece of cake.

Well, not quite.

One of the problems complicating the project is that over the years Howes House has increasingly served ancillary community functions unrelated to the council on ging. Organizations large and small hold meetings there, and/or their regular events. Bridge clubs, rug hooking and knitting groups, town committees and boards all use the building. The select board meets there whenever an overflow crowd is expected and had its weekly meetings there during the renovation of town hall. So the focus groups that were convened in the early visioning stages of the project were asked to indicate what other functions should be provided for in the renovation design.

In this writer’s view, that was a big mistake.

The primary use of Howes House should be to facilitate the functioning of the council on aging, not to become a community center. The architects needed a detailed analysis of current and future needs and specific directions to work from. That basis work does not appear to have been done. The focus groups’ wish lists have been given too much priority, resulting in a behemoth of an enlarged proposed building costing an eye-popping $10 million dollars (estimated) to build.

Plus, Howes House sits on a very limited site that also hosts the library, has barely-adequate parking now, and has wastewater restrictions.

The proposed design, and associated cost have not been greeted with much enthusiasm, especially not by Chilmark and Aquinnah, which are expected to share the cost. Ten-pounds-in-a-five-pound bag is not an overstatement.

Enter the long-standing West Tisbury historic district commission, which has for decades toiled over renovation and building plans within the district. All projects need its approval to proceed. The result of these efforts, contentious as they sometimes are, is a village center that very much respects its historic roots.

The historic district commission is often seen as obstructionist when it objects to a submitted plan. But its published guidelines have been in effect for 40 years and it has a track record of getting to yes in many cases. But not always.

When the town itself is the applicant, it should receive the same treatment as everyone else. However, saying no always gets people upset. In this case, the historic district commission has emphatically said the mass and scale of the building do not meet their guidelines. I was present at its recent meeting, and the final response to the building committee’s application was unanimous and unequivocal even after multiple attempts, over months, to revise the design. “No” is their decision.

The building committee is predictably upset. The project cannot proceed. There is an impasse, which unfortunately has become somewhat acrimonious and adversarial. Not good.

The solution seems to suggest itself: step back. Thank and disband the existing building committee, and start over. Thoroughly involve the community of all three towns. Remove priority consideration of any ancillary uses for the building. Make the needs of Howes House and the council on aging primary. Provide specific guidance to the architects, whomever that turns out to be. Build a community center somewhere else, if West Tisbury actually wants one. See what the architects can do with the existing building with minimal expansion, if any is actually needed. Control the scale and size of any additions so as to harmonize with the character of the historic village, not to mention reducing the cost.

Such a project would likely get instant support, and a “yes” from the historic district commission. And likely a buy-in from Chilmark and Aquinnah.

The select board needs to step up, heed all the valid project criticism it has received and facilitate a much wanted and needed project.

Richard Knabel lives in West Tisbury and was a select board member for nine years.