Historic renovation planned for Commercial Street
BY PETER B. BRACE
Turn the corner off Washington Street heading into town onto Commercial Street and you will pass a grouping of buildings facing the harbor.

A view of the harbor between Commercial Wharf and the town pier is what tenants of Harborview Place will certainly get once new owner Mitch Willey renovates the seven-building compound on the corner of Commercial and Washington streets shown above in a computer generated image of how he wants it to look. Willey is hoping to begin work in late April and complete it by the summer of 2008.

One is nearly covered in ivy and the others are in need of renovations and repairs.

This seven-building complex will get just that because their new owner, Harborview, LLP, is seeking a major commercial development permit from the Planning Board to revamp the structures, which sit on .47 of an acre at 3 Commercial St. and .13 of an acre at 24 Washington St.

Architectural plans the Historic District Commission is calling a "historic renovation" were approved by the HDC in early January. Architect Andrew Kotchen of workshop/apd of New York City, N.Y. and Nantucket said that Harborview will help clean up this southern entryway into town.

"Currently, there are 12 rental apartment units, so we have actually moved some of them around and we've actually reduced them to 10 condo units," said Kotchen. "For the most part, we're trying to bring some of those buildings back and capitalize on the historic character of them. "A few of them are not [historic]. It's just going to look a lot better."

With new names like Periwinkle, Pisces and Hermit Crab, the buildings will be gutted and reconfigured, their walls and roofs stripped and re-shingled, and the landscaping, sidewalks and curbing all redone. All the units in this compound will have access to the beach in front of it.

"There's not a whole lot we can do there due to the existing wetlands," said Kotchen. "We're really going to leave a natural landscape [there] with a wetland buffer and clean up around the buildings to try to create privacy for the individual units."

The properties, 3 Commercial St. and 24 Washington St., formerly owned by Nantucket Island Resorts, are valued at $3,917,200 and $2,456,700, respectively. Nantucket Island Resorts sold them to Time & Place, a Washington, D.C.-based company owned by Mitch Willey, specializing in private hotels, on Sept. 15, 2006 for $10.5 million.

On Nantucket, Time & Place also owns Windmill Heights, a six-bedroom, eight-bath home, the Lily Pond estate with six bedrooms, seven baths, a 19th century four-bedroom home on Liberty Street, a 1785 six-bedroom home on India Street and a four-bedroom, four-bath home with a cottage on Easton Street. Off island, Willey's company possesses private hotel properties in 19 locations including Belize, Maui, Palm Springs, St. Barth's, the French countryside, Paris, Scotland, Italy, Spain, Washington, Los Angeles and Puerto Vallarta, among others.

Kotchen said Harborview, LLP plans to restore the ivy-covered building on Washington Street, which he said used to be a barn along with a small cottage closest to the beach. The effort, he added, will help beautify this part of Washington Street.

"This is sort of a new gateway into town, it's going to clean up that corner," said Kotchen. "You've got the gallery across the street and even the power plant is not that bad, so I think everybody seems to be excited about it."

Formerly known as the Harbor View Apartments with 12 units in six buildings, the buildings' units were part of the Boat Basin Cottages that First Winthrop used for employee housing

when it owned the properties. I