Selectmen can help preserve the former Coffin land near Nantucket Golf Club tonight
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
Phillips Run Road, a six-lot cluster subdivision just west of Nantucket Golf Club that was approved by the Planning Board in December 2002, is now free of legal entanglements and can be developed, although no plan is imminent.

PHOTO BY R. KURT JAMES Seagulls swarm a scallop shell pile in the parking lot of Jetties Beach.

However, development may not ever happen if the Board of Selectmen tonight ratifies two conservation restrictions proposed to protect land in this development, with one of the restrictions triggering an agreement between golf club members and Phillips Run Road developer Stephanie Coffin Andrew.

Shortly after the Planning Board approved Andrew's cluster development on a 25-acre parcel to the north of her brother Mitchell Coffin's property at 230 Milestone Road, the Nantucket Land Council, the Massachusetts Audubon Society and Nantucket Golf Club appealed the board's decision.

The two conservation groups and the golf club challenged the board's allowance of a 2,963-foot access road that was 1,963 feet longer than the 1,000-foot maximum length for access roads that do not have a secondary access road at the other end.

However, the Land Council's and Mass. Audubon's concerns were allayed earlier this year by an agreement between Phillips Run Open Space Fund, LLC, a group of Nantucket Golf Club members that is proposing to buy Andrew's sixth lot closest to club property at fair market value, said Nantucket Golf Club attorney Melissa Philbrick.

Should the deal go through, Phillips Run Open Space Fund, LLC will then give a conservation restriction on the .80-of-an-acre lot to the Nantucket Islands Land Bank. The deal hinges on the Board of Selectmen's ratifying the conservation restriction at tonight's meeting. With the selectmen signing off on the restriction, according to Andrew's settlement agreement, she will grant the Phillips Run Open Space Fund right of first refusal for the remaining five lots of the cluster subdivision, said Philbrick.

Additionally, per a condition of her Planning Board approval that 80 percent of the 25-acre lot be put into conservation as is typically done with cluster subdivisions, she granted a second conservation restriction on the northern 20-acre portion of her property to the Phillips Run Road Homeowners Association Trust, which the Land Bank will enforce should the selectmen also ratify this conservation restriction at tonight's meeting.

As for Andrew's plans for development of her cluster subdivision, Andrew's attorney, David L. Arons of the firm, Issadore & Arons of Norwell, Mass., said it was too early for him to comment on his client's intentions for her property but that he may have some new information in mid-January.

Should the Phillips Run Open Space Fund opt not to purchase any of the remaining five lots in the development and Andrew develops her land, each lot could support two dwellings on the edge of one of the largest undeveloped portions of the island.

Elated to be able to protect another two chunks of the Middle Moors from development, the Land Bank has no plans for the 20-acre and .80-of-anacre conservation restrictions it will enforce for the Phillips Run Road Homeowners Association and the Phillips Run Open Space Fund.

"What it does is it keeps houses clustered at the southern end of the property," said Land Bank Executive Director Eric Savetsky. "It's got Nantucket Conservation Foundation and, I believe, Audubon property, all to the north, so for a layout, it's beneficial to have kept the development to the south and not have the development stick up into the Middle Moors any more than it has to. It adds more contiguous open space to the moors."

Several years before he died in June 1993, the late Henry Coffin Jr. gave three of his chiildren - Henry III, Mitchell, and Stephanie - 25 acres each, and then gave Robert 16 acres. To date, only Robert L. "Skinner" Coffin has sold any of his father's former property for residential development. Currently, Developer Gary Winn is developing the six acres he purchased from Robert Coffin in 2004 into a 14-lot cluster subdivision on 2.4 acres, putting a conservation restriction on the remaining 3.6 acres for the Land Bank to enforce.

When their father passed away, the four children sold 250 acres of his estate to the Nantucket Golf Club, which built a world-class 18-hole golf course that opened in 1998.

Currently, the Coffin children are mulling what to do with 65.9 acres at 260 Milestone Road, the site of the Siasconset Golf Club, assessed at $8,189,800. As of the early summer of 2005, the Coffins' 10-year lease of its golf course to the neighboring Nantucket Golf Club expired and the Coffin family has been running the Siasconset Golf Club since then.

On May 18, the Coffins secured a Conservation Commission wetlands delineation for 260 Milestone Road and the 53.4-acre 270 Milestone Road, owned by the Estate of Henry Coffin, causing concern among the island conservation community, the 'Sconset Trust in particular, over the fate of the combined 120 acres of largely undeveloped land.

Mum on their plans, Robert Coffin said in mid- October that he and his family are taking the winter to decide what to do with their land.

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