Surfside area plan gets rolling Tom Nevers’ plan well on its way
BY PETER B. BRACE
Surfside and South Shore Road area residents caught the planning bug this year and are just starting the process of gathering information to write a long-range planning document for their neighborhoods.

Area planning is all the rage on Nantucket these days. With ’Sconset’s, Madaket’s and the Mid-Island area plans all in the bag and in varied stages of actuation, the Surfside Area Plan Working Group and the Tom Nevers Civic Association are both working on their plans. Tom Nevers got going this summer while the Surfside group, shown here meeting on Dec. 11, which includes residents from the South Shore area, is in its infancy.

The new workgroup, the Surfside Area Plan Working Group, with 18 members, six from the South Shore Road neighborhoods, is following in the steps of the Tom Nevers Civic Association, which got going on its area plan in August and the Madaket Area Plan Workgroup, which finished its plan this year and got the Nantucket Planning & Economic Development Commission’s endorsement on Aug. 7.

The Siasconset Area Plan Workgroup completed its area plan in 2005, and the Mid-Island Area Plan, the first one to be completed on Nantucket, was endorsed

in 2004. However, the Surfside/South Shore Road

group is, like Madaket, using the nine elements of the Chapter 41-81D Master Plan as a guide to writing its plan. These include: goals and policies; land use; economic development; circulation; housing; open space and recreation; services and facilities; natural and cultural resources; and implementation.

“Surfside seems to be one of the last areas where development is possible,” said Surfside resident Maureen Beck. “We want to make sure the development is appropriate and we want to make sure the septic codes are followed in relation to the size of the lots. We’re concerned about the airport; the gas fumes in the air and the drainage.

“[And], I think I would say that roads are a real concern for us because they are used by the public more than by the residents.”

Beck added that they want the town to take many of Surfside’s roads so they can be repaired and that their plan would also keep the One Big Beach program in mind, but all of these actions are a long way off as this workgroup is just getting organized.

“We’re pretty much at the beginning,” said Beck. “We’ve had meetings in September, October, November and we’re having one next Monday [Dec. 11]. At this meeting, we’re hoping to assign tasks for the nine elements of the plan to our members. We’ve had such enthusiasm with the workgroup, so we’re ready to go ahead with each member taking an element and getting some coverage.”

Out in Tom Nevers, after getting the go-ahead from the Planning Commission to do its area plan at the NP&EDC’s Aug. 7 meeting, with 11 members representing each part of Tom Nevers, the Tom Nevers Area Plan Workgroup is in the process of collecting and analyzing a 33-question survey of 591 property owners on what they want their plan to address. Tom Nevers Civic League President Dual Macintyre said that to date, they have received more than 150 completed surveys with several more trickling in each day.

“During the summer, we had a series of focus group meetings with residents and we identified all the issues that people were concerned about and wanted to address in the plan,” said Macintyre.

This workgroup also asked property owners which streets they live on and whether they are year-round or seasonal residents. Macintyre guesses that between 30 and 40 percent of Tom Nevers property owners live there year-round. The group collected growth and development data from the town this summer and wrote up its questionnaire that it sent out at the end of October.

Once the Tom Nevers Area Plan Workgroup thinks it has all the surveys in that it is going to get, it will use the information gleaned from the surveys to write its area plan.

The area plan concept is an outgrowth of the original Comprehensive Community Plan and, arguably, one of its more successful components. Area plans allow distinct island locales like Madaket, ’Sconset, Tom Nevers, Wauwinet and Quidnet-Squam to define how they want to develop in the long-term, as well as creating a blueprint of recommendations and goals. Some aspects of each area plan may include efforts that require Town Meeting articles, while others could serve as a guide for town review boards and the Board of Selectmen and County Commissioners when development and architectural changes are proposed in each area.

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