Field Notes
by Peter B Brace

GREEN FOR GREEN Small Friends of Nantucket raised $100,000 at its its Spring Down the House fundraiser this past Saturday at the Chanticleer Restaurant and Siasconset Casino.

Funds from the event - the first of at least two fundraisers for Small Friends - will be matched by the Weezie Foundation and an anonymous donor for a total of roughly $200,000, said Gabrielle Gould, Director of Development for Small Friends Building Dreams Capital Campaign.

Small Friends is trying to raise $3.5 million, $2.7 million of that for its new schoolhouse at 19 Nobadeer Farm Road.

On Jan. 18, Small Friends hired J.K. Scanlan of East Falmouth, Mass. as their general contractor and ultimately are seeking the gold level of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification through the green building rating system of the U.S. Green Building Council for its structure.

LEED Certification is issued for silver, gold or platinum levels of a building's environmental friendliness based on the degree of green building techniques used. The council looks at such aspects of construction as building materials, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, recycling of construction waste and debris, indoor environmental quality and building site sustainability.

Gould said that Small Friends has raised about $1.7 million already and that they hope to break ground in August. Small Friends' building designer, newly LEED-certified Architect Steve Blashfield of Chip Webster & Associates, went before the Historic District Commission last night with a major re-design of their original 6,638-square-foot building that Blashfield drew last spring.

JUST IN CASE Great Harbor Yacht Club began building its club facilities and installing its infrastructure late this past winter. The Junior Sailing Program building is going up now and construction of the boat building and sports barn are expected to follow or even overlap that work. However, in case something goes awry for Great Harbor and it cannot build all of its club, it has submitted a two-lot subdivision for its 96 Washington St. lot, which sits on 1.4 acres, the water side of its holdings.

Island club attorney Sarah Alger told the Planning Board at its April 23 meeting that her clients are hedging their bets, securing a preliminary subdivision plan in case the unthinkable happens. If it does, and the Planning Board approves this plan and a definitive plan afterwards, Great Harbor would turn its property into two lots - 22,416 square feet and 26,543 square feet - off a short cul-de-sac with a road width of 20 feet and a secondary dwelling on each lot.

The board, wanting more time for information on waivers to be requested from Great Harbor, continued this hearing to its May 14 hearing.

THE OSPREYS ARE BACK! Terry Hughes, Robert Earley and Dick Corkish spotted the same pair of ospreys building their nest on a nesting pole along Long Pond on March 25. Corkish, however, was officially the first to spot the osprey at around 11 a.m. Hughes' sighting occurred about an hour later, and Earley got a first look on March 26, according to the Maria Mitchell Association.

MONEY TO COUNT CARS Amidst the hubbub and congestion of downtown Nantucket in the summer, engineers from the firm of Milone and McBroom will be watching you navigate the narrow streets. For their part in the Downtown Circulation and Ferry Access Improvement Study, the Nantucket Planning & Economic Development Commission approved the spending of $85,000

for the study. I