The BADD and GOOD about the Field Club

By Janet Hefler - July 6, 2006

The proposed site for the Field Club, a members-only, not-for-profit, private family recreational facility, is located on seven acres on South Village Road, off Katama Road. For many years, Grant's gravel pit operated on the property

The club will feature an 11,000-square-foot fitness center, an 800-square-foot tennis pavilion, and a 7,200 square-foot learning center. A platform tennis court, six clay and two grass tennis courts, an adult pool and a children's pool, a pond, an area for lawn games, and 74 parking spaces will be included on its grounds. Outdoor activities will be limited to daytime hours, from 8 am to dusk.

The facility will be staffed with 24 seasonal and six year-round employees, with housing provided for 14.

The Field Club's evolution involved a little B.A.D.D. along with the GOOD. The project actually is an offshoot of another development of regional impact (DRI) approved by the Martha's Vineyard Commission (MVC) four years ago.

In 2002, the Peter Bettencourt, Alex Alexander, Mike Donaroma, and Timothy Dyke (B.A.D.D.) Company, an investment group, proposed to divide about 24 acres off South Middle Road in Edgartown into seven 30,000-square-foot lots, on property surrounding a former gravel pit. An eighth lot would be used for a landscaping and construction business.

In 2004, the B.A.D.D. Company returned to the MVC for permission to modify the plan for a 32-lot residential subdivision. The MVC approved the DRI with several conditions pertaining to building the houses in three phases, providing town water for the subdivision, and allotting three lots to affordable housing.

Since then, another group of Edgartown investors calling themselves the GOOD (not an acronym) Company, headed up by Gerret C. Conover and Tom LeClair of LandVest, entered into an agreement to buy seven central lots in the approved subdivision for building the Field Club, contingent on obtaining MVC approval and a special permit from the Edgartown Zoning Board of Appeals.

Michael Donaroma, a member of the B.A.D.D. Company and owner of Donaroma's Nursery and Landscape services, currently has two greenhouses and five to six acres of nursery stock, tree, shrubs, and perennials on the site for his landscape construction business.

The membership base will consist of owners of house lots in the B.A.D.D. Company subdivision, seasonal residents, and off-season (Sept. 15 to June 15) members. The Field Club's developers hope to sell 500 in-season memberships at $80,000 each, plus annual dues, and 300 off-season memberships. The club will not be built unless a sufficient number of memberships are sold.

Members will be entitled to use both the Field Club recreational facility and the Navigator Club, which will be located on the second floor of the Navigator Restaurant, purchased by the same investors.

The Navigator Restaurant, slated for renovation, will provide continued public use on the first floor. The second floor will be available to club members from June to September and available to the public for weddings and functions during the remainder of the season. As part of the renovation, the building will be shifted back from the waterfront, allowing for a brick walkway from Main Street along the water's edge at Edgartown Harbor. The proposed use fits in the town of Edgartown's harbor plan.

The GOOD Company submitted a six-page letter of offers to the MVC, including a community benefits package. The Field Club Charitable Foundation will donate money for scholarships to send Island youth to the YMCA and to the Martha's Vineyard Boys & Girls Club summer camp, as well as providing scholarships to Vineyard regional high school and/or charter school graduates who intend to major in hospitality and/or recreational facility management.

In addition to hosting charitable fundraisers, the Field Club will make the second floor of the Navigator Restaurant available to other non-profit groups for fundraising events. The learning center will be made available to community groups in the off-season (Oct. 15 to May 15).