To the Editor:
Twelve years ago, while studying the walking districts of Vineyard Haven, I became aware that the then A&P (Stop & Shop now) parking lot would become a new town square with shops surrounding and connecting Main Street to the ferry and the harbor.
The plan for the new Stop & Shop will stop this development. The new store should be designed with retail shops tucked into the facade that faces the parking lot and there should be a continuous sidewalk access for these new shops and to help connect Main Street to the harbor and Water Street.
Porto Pizza and Menemsha Blues have done a good job in making pedestrian space on the north side of the square.
We used to have Shirley’s Hardware, then Midnight Farm, and a Chinese restaurant with a tee-shirt store above. Now it is proposed that we have nothing but a supermarket and a whole bunch of supermarket carts and people and cars all mixed up together.
Can’t we just have the Shop without the Stop?
Jamie Weisman
Terrain Architects
Vineyard Haven
Jaime Weisman, in concert with Island Housing Trust (IHT), an abutter to the Stop & Shop property, is helping IHT to plan a residential housing development on its property. IHT has asked Stop & Shop for considerations in the supermarket company’s planning of its expanded market.
