42-acres on Cliff Road to be subdivided, developed
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
What looks like an ordinary preliminary plan that the Planning Board approved at its meeting on Monday night is actually an early development proposal from a long-time summer family that would rather not sell any of its land.

The waterfront Cliff Road property, outlined in red.

Faced with staggering inheritance

and property taxes, William

P. Graves III and his sister, Lydia B. Graves II, are subdividing 42 acres willed to their family by the estate of their late aunt Alice DeJonge.

The Graves family, according to William P. Graves III and his island attorney, Sarah Alger, wanted noth- ing more than to continue summering at their house located on the Cliff at 129 and 137 Cliff Road overlooking Nantucket Sound, but the harsh fiscal reality of Nantucket's finite and shrinking number of undeveloped waterfront properties is not going to let them.

Graves told the Planning Board that his family reluctantly wants to subdivide the two existing lots into a total of six, ranging in size from .67 of an acre to 19.4 acres. The Graves will keep their existing 19.4-acre lot containing their house on the water, a large wetland and Reed Pond just south of it, deed one to three of the remaining five lots to their cousins, and sell one or two more to pay their tax bills, said Alger.

"If I had my way, we wouldn't even be here talking to you because my aunt and my mom and my uncle wanted to keep this land," William Graves told the board. "Basically the whole reason we want to do it this way is because in the end I have to swap some land for my aunt's estate because we'd lose half of it, and the other reason is my aunt's other brother, Sydney Graves, has three cousins and she wants them to have a stake.

"If there's any way you want emergency access, that's cool, I just want to get this done."

Emergency access - required when an access road is longer than 1,000 feet - will be an issue for the board if and when the Graves submit a definitive subdivision plan, because five of the lots are trapped between the Nantucket Conservation Foundation's Tupancy Links property to the southwest, Nantucket Sound to the north and Reed Pond and its wetlands to the east.

What concerned Planning Board member Barry Rector is that Graves did not say his plans were for one dwelling per lot, leaving the issue of secondary dwellings and the potential for 10 houses on the land up in the air.

"It's certainly something that we're willing to discuss with the board, but not restrict to all six lots, maybe restrict to two of the lots," said attorney Alger. "Given the size of the lot, we're definitely doing a minimum amount of lots."

The next biggest issue for the board seems to be how the lots are configured. Included with a definitive subdivision submission, the board wants to see how the lots would look in a cluster subdivision that would package all of the lots in one section of the property, leaving a larger portion of it undeveloped. Acluster layout might open up an emergency access route that is not currently apparent in the existing preliminary plan.

"What really stuck out for me is the potential for doing a cluster here," Rector said. "If you're going to extend that far up into the property, you need to give some consideration to how you're going to get out of there."

As the development proposal is now, Graves, who already has an order of conditions from the Conservation Commission delineating the wetlands boundaries on the property, wants to build a rural road 16 feet wide with a gravel surface and also wants to explore the installation of innovative septic systems to treat sewage more effectively than a standard leaching field.

The rest of the details will be laid out in a definitive plan if the Graves choose to submit one. An approved preliminary plan freezes existing zoning on the property for seven months, allowing

property owners time to draw up and submit a definitive plan for the board to review under current zoning bylaws.

In the Land Use General-Two district (two- acre zoning) and listed at the Town Assessor's office as the fourth highest assessed residential lot on the island, the 33 acres at 129 Cliff are valued at $33,186,100. The 10.5 acres at 137 Cliff Road just west of 129 Cliff Road come in at $20,293,700.

In third place is Goodrich Nantucket, LLC's 17.2 acres at 36 Shawkemo Road, assessed at $34 million, topped by the 12.6 acres owned by Penant Realty, LLC at 4 Coskata Course Way worth $37.6 million. Leading all residential properties on the island is Old Red Gate, LP's 35 acres at 208 Polpis Road, valued at $39.8 million.