STOP & SHOP ADDING PARKING SPACES
Stop & Shop is adding 18 parking spaces to its existing parking lot. The project began earlier this month and includes the demolition of the former Pacific National Bank branch office building where most of the parking will be situated.

Stop & Shop got Planning Board approval in June to make improvements to its parking areas. The approval includes the creation of employee parking spaces behind the store along with the 18 new spaces in front.

Senior Planner Leslie Woodson said the Quincy, Mass.-based grocery store will also build a four-foot-wide brick sidewalk that will run parallel to the fire station and the existing parking lot. It is also widening its Sparks Avenue and Pleasant Street entrances to 28 feet, and installing two shopping cart corrals in the main parking area.

The expansion of the parking lot is part of a larger, long-term expansion of the entire Stop & Shop property that is planned when the town moves the Nantucket Fire Department to a proposed public safety complex at 2 Fairgrounds Road. Once this move becomes imminent, Town Manager Libby Gibson said that the town could then begin negotiations with Stop & Shop for the 1.2-acre fire station site at 131 and 135 Pleasant St.

ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent The former Pacific National Bank branch was demolished last week to make room for more parking

After Stop & Shop acquires the land, it wants to add 90 parking spaces and 12,000 to 14,000 square feet of new retail, processing and storage space, including two freestanding buildings on Pleasant Street that it hopes to lease to island businesses.

Currently, the fire station property consisting of two lots - .76 of an acre at 131 Pleasant St. and .46 of an acre at 135 Pleasant St. - is assessed at $5,257,700. If the expansion of its facilities comes to pass, Stop & Shop could convert both of these lots into parking.

Stop & Shop spokesman Robert Keane said he expects the current work to wrap up in about a week.

OYSTER BAY TRIES TO ADOPT NANTUCKET LIGHTSHIP

The historic Nantucket Lightship, which has been docked temporarily in Oyster Bay, Long Island, N.Y., for almost five years, might remain there permanently.

COURTESY OF NANTUCKET HISORICAL ASSOCIATION

The Town of Oyster Bay is trying to adopt the 71- year-old vessel after its current owner, the fledgling National Lighthouse Museum, decided it should give up the ship because of delays in opening its planned facility on Staten Island.

"We don't feel it's responsible to leave the boat in limbo," said Jerry Roberts, a museum board member and former executive director. "We felt it was time to reach out and make sure we can get the ship into the right hands."

Oyster Bay Supervisor John Venditto says that would be the town. And Roberts, a member of the museum board's executive committee, said it has already agreed to pursue the Oyster Bay option.

Venditto said the red, 150-foot ship built in 1936 would remain at the pier at the town-owned Waterfront Center in Oyster Bay, where it has been since the museum brought it to an oyster festival and left it for restoration.

The town would organize a new restoration effort and find a use for the floating lighthouse, such as a marine education center, Venditto said. He said the lightship could play a role in making Oyster Bay hamlet a center for historical tourism.

The deed for the lightship stipulates that it be owned by a nonprofit corporation,

so the town would have to start one. I