Land Bank scoops up 19 acres in the moors
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
Snatching 19.2 acres from the jaws of development, the Nantucket Islands Land Bank will buy five of six lots on Pout Pond Road in mid-April.

Savetsky: "It fills in a missing piece of the puzzle in the whole central moors."

The purchase - Land Bank Director Eric Savetsky cannot disclose the price until the deal closes - is important to the Land Bank because the land is part of the subdivision, Pout Pond Road, that could be developed at any time by its owners, Glenn Shriberg, Morton I. Kaufman, Dorothy Kaufman and Barry Zlotin into two-dwelling lots.

"We own significant additional land to the south of the property as well as to east and then connected with Nantucket Conservation Foundation property, so it flows into the Middle Moors and the water company owns land to the west. It fills in a missing piece of the puzzle in the whole central moors," said Savetsky.

The Pout Pont Road land is off Kelley Road to the southwest facing south out to land owned by the Nantucket Conservation Foundation, Nantucket Islands Land Bank and the town.

The Land Bank already owns an adjacent 15.2 acres to the south, and an adjacent 17.95 acres to the east.

COURTESY OF TOWN OF NANTUCKET GIS The odd shapes of five lots, above, ranging in size from 3.1 to 5.6 acres are going to be merged by their owners into one big lot they will sell to the Land Bank in April. The land is going to help fill in the gaps of open space between property owned by the town, the land bank and the Nantucket Conservation Foundation.

For the last year or so, the property had been advertised on the Internet only at the now-inactive Web site, www.polpisland.com, where prospective buyers were given aerial photos of the lots and the offering procedure to follow should they be interested in making an offer. The site also stated that all the lots had to be sold together and included a description of the property:

"The land consists of five contiguous lots of unimproved land, and abuts extensive property owned by the Nantucket Land Bank, Wannacomet Water Company and the Girl Scouts of America, so privacy is assured. There is a small man-made pond on one lot that extends onto an adjoining lot and the rest of the property rises slightly to the south."

The current owners of the land received Planning Board approval for their six-lot development of parcels ranging in size from 3.1 to 5.6 acres on Sept. 23, 1980. That was before the Planning Board began limiting the number of years developers of major residential subdivisions had to install infrastructure to two with the chance for a two-year extension before the board's permit expired. That approval was for 23.5 acres and included a 20-foot-wide access road. Zlotin's attorney, Sarah Alger, attended the Planning Board meeting Monday night to get the road narrowed down to 12 feet and five of the six lots - 2, 3, 4 and 5 Pout Pond Road and 20 Kelley Road - merged into one lot.

The Kaufmans are keeping 6 Pout Pond Road for private use, which helped convince the Planning Board to vote 4-0 to merge the lots and shrink the road to essentially driveway width.

Michael Fee of 12 Kelley Road, the only member of the public to comment on this application, had no problem with this change.

"I am for the proposal to get it down to 12 feet," said Fee. "I feel it would be better than 40 feet."

That is because as Kelley Road is today, a bumpy, rutted washboard of sand and dirt. Widening, according to Alger, would not make sense for just one lot since the road will basically

be a driveway. I