2008 A Look Ahead
Planning

National Grid will file a multi-use subdivision plan for its Candle Street property to spark community discussion about potential uses of the prime downtown property.

Two land-related articles that will convert paper roads into public access to beaches for the One Big Beach program and for affordable-housing land in Madaket.

Planning Director Andrew Vorce shared his menu of development prophecies for 2008:

• Area plans: Tom Nevers area plan will be completed in February, while Surfside/South Shore Road will continue working on theirs.

• Planning Board review of Bob Matthews' application for a major commercial development special permit for Phase II of the Point Breeze Hotel project continues on Jan. 14. This phase includes a 39-room hotel straddling the corner of Easton and North Beach streets with five cottages lining Easton Street and three tennis courts with 149 underground parking spaces.

• Expect the Nantucket Dreamland Foundation, which purchased the Dreamland Theater from Dreamland Theater ZMG, LLC, for $9.8 million on Oct. 3, to submit architectural plans from newly hired Architect Graham Gund to the Historic District Commission and to the Planning Board and Conservation Commission.

• Conceptual plans for National Grid's

Candle Street property, site of the former electric generation plant, are likely to be refined in 2008, the most practical idea suggested being a parking garage.

• National Grid will file a multiuse subdivision plan for the above property, more to spark community discussion about potential uses of the lots than to actively pursue development of its land.

• Development plans for the use of 10 and 12 Washington St. as a bus terminal for the Nantucket Regional Transit Authority from the Schmidt Family Foundation are imminent this year.

• Vorce is sure that he, the Planning Board and its staff will finish the 41-81D Master Plan in 2008.

• With blessings from the Community Preservation Committee secured last fall, Vorce is hoping that Town Meeting voters will see the logic in hiring a housing planner to work with the planning staff coordinating the housing efforts of all entities on the island.

• Depending on the outcome of arbitration of former Zoning Board of Appeals Administrator Linda Williams' firing by Town Manager Libby Gibson, Vorce may hire another planning staffer to take over Williams' duties.

PLANNING & ZONING ARTICLES

• With the language and concepts for three new Town and Country Overlay District articles already approved by Town Meeting voters, the Planning Board will sponsor three articles for the adoption of maps for the Village Residential, Village Neighborhood Commercial and Village TEC (trade, entrepreneurship and craft) zones.

• The adoption of the above articles will erase the Residential-Commercial, Residential Commercial-Two and LC zoning districts.

• Vorce and the board also want voters to see their reasoning for creating an industrial zone around the airport which will appear in the form of another article for the 2008 annual Town Meeting.

• Count on several articles designed to satisfy the density needs of property owners in the

3M subdivision bounded by Somerset Lane, Raceway Drive and the Miacomet Golf Course.

• Vorce also hinted there would be a special zoning bylaw amendment drafted to allow

farmers' markets in certain areas of the island.

• Two other land-related articles will be written that will convert paper roads into public access to beaches for the One Big Beach program and for affordable-housing land in

Madaket. I