2007 A Look Back
Top Stories of the Year

ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent file for a 39-room hotel

POINT BREEZE/ HARBOR HOUSE

The redevelopment of two of Nantucket's largest hotels, the Point Breeze and Harbor House, broke into full stride last year.

Bob Matthews, owner of the Point Breeze, began work on the 118-year-old former Gordon Folger Hotel in fall 2006 and Harbor House owner Stephen Karp, principal in Nantucket Island Resorts, broke ground on September 2007.

Matthews' winter of work derailed after his crews removed all of the first floor of the building, stripped its sheathing and reinforced its internal frame with steel beams. That work cost Matthews valuable construction time from late winter into the spring, when the Historic District Commission discovered the work was done without a demolition permit. As a result, Building Inspector Bernie Bartlett issued Matthews a stopwork order in early March for not filing complete plans with the Building Department.

That order was lifted around May 24, Matthews got back to work, but only for three weeks, as he was unsuccessful getting an extension beyond the mandatory June 15 cessation of exterior work downtown.

The Independent file

Since the seasonal work moratorium lifted on Sept. 15, workers replaced the sheathing of the existing hotel, built and sheathed the reconstruction of the original hotel, as a 4,091-square-foot addition, connecting it to the main building.

Matthews also filed an application for Phase II for a 39-room hotel straddling the northwest corner of Easton and North Beach streets, with five two-story cottages lining Easton Street, three tennis courts with 149 underground parking spaces, a three-lane bowling alley and a second pool.

By contrast, Stephen Karp's rearrangement of Harbor House village, with the digging of foundation holes and quickly pouring foundations for two new buildings on the corner of South Beach and Easton streets, is moving along smoothly.

Since Sept. 16, Karp's crews have demolished the townhouses along the north side of the main access road into the Harbor House Village, have put up Buildings One and Two on the corner of Easton and South Beach streets and have began renovating the Springfield and Manchester houses, and building Buildings Six and Seven on the corner of North Water and Easton streets.

- By Peter B. Brace

THE BUS HUB

In September, voters defeated an override of about $1 million to offset the cost of the town's buying the former Island Spirits property at 10 and 12 Washington Street as a bus hub. At that point, Alan Worden, principal of Scout Real Estate Capital and co-owner of Windwalker Real Estate, contacted the Schmidt Family Foundation, funded by summer residents Wendy Schmidt, who is president of the Foundation, and her husband Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. The Schmidts responded immediately in favor of having the Foundation make the purchase through an entity it created called Greenhound LLC. Worden was named project manager and traveled to New York City at the end of October with Planning Director Andrew Vorce to discuss the project with Foundation agents.

On Nov. 12, the selectmen, Vorce, Worden and others met at the site for an informal meeting on the bus hub proposal, with Worden explaining that the Foundation wants to take whatever time is required for studies and discussion on whether and how the plan should go forward. The hope is to use the Washington Street property as a prototype in the summer of 2008 to see how it works with NRTAbuses pulling in and exiting the parcel and if it helps restore citizen parking along Washington and Salem streets.

The debate over the wisdom of the October action, when the $3.5 million transaction with the Foundation became official, will extend well into 2008.

- By Mary Lancaster