Thursday night, Matt Viaggio, owner of the half-acre lot at the intersection of Masonic Avenue and Dukes County Avenue in Oak Bluffs, a.k.a. Bradley Square, will go before the Martha’s Vineyard Commission (MVC) at a public hearing to ask permission to demolish Denniston House, the long-vacant, ramshackle building on the lot at 8 Masonic Avenue.
Denniston House is one of the first black churches on Martha’s Vineyard, built in 1895. The former church has been the subject of years of contention between those who consider it an historic building that should be preserved, and those who consider it an eyesore that should be demolished. Because the building is more than 100 years old, and in a commercial district, the MVC is reviewing the demolition as a development of regional impact (DRI).
Mr. Viaggio has already had to clear many bureaucratic hurdles to get to this point. He bought the troubled property at a bank auction in 2011 for $500,000 after it had been on the market for more than two years. He told The Times it took three years to clear title on the property before closing in October 2014. In February 2015, Denniston House was designated as “preferably preserved” by the Oak Bluffs Historical Commission (OBHC), which triggered a six-month demolition moratorium. Mr. Viaggio said he met with MVC officials twice in March 2015. Then–MVC executive director Mark London referred the matter to the Massachusetts Historic Commission (MHC). “He said the ruling would take about four weeks,” Mr. Viaggio said. “It took six months.” In a letter to the MVC, the MHC ruled, “The MHC has no jurisdiction or review role in MVC’s DRI decisions,” thus leaving the final decision entirely with the MVC.
The DRI process is rooted in the MVC’s enabling legislation (Chapter 831 of the Acts of 1977, as amended), which authorizes the commission “to review developments that are either so large or have such significant impacts on their surroundings that they would affect more than one town,” according to the MVC web site.
Several Oak Bluffs town officials blasted the DRI designation for Denniston House.
Planning Board chairman Brian Packish called it “outright extortion.”
“There really is no historic significance on 8 Masonic Avenue,” he said. “We have the NAACP documented that it’s not interested.”
“I don’t understand why they need to weigh in on this,” selectman Walter Vail said. “These delays cost a lot of money, and this has been going on way too long. The building needs to come down; it’s an eyesore. Whatever goes up there will have to go before the planning board, so the town will have plenty of say about what goes there.”
Soon after taking office in the spring of 2015, MVC executive director Adam Turner stated that a top priority would be revising the DRI checklist. However, the same checklist remains in place.
“We sent our final version to the Department of Energy and Land Use Affairs in September, and we’re still waiting to hear back,” Mr. Turner told The Times on Tuesday.
Mr. Turner said the 100-year DRI trigger intended to protect “historic” buildings has been changed on the new DRI checklist to “buildings constructed prior to 1900,” so Denniston House would still be considered a DRI if the new checklist had been approved.
Future plans
Mr. Viaggio, an experienced builder, told The Times he hopes to salvage whatever fixtures he can from Denniston House, but restoring the building is out of the question. “If the building was usable, I’d use it,” he said.
Preservation of the Denniston House was once the cornerstone of an ambitious campaign, begun in 2007, when the Island Affordable Housing Fund (IAHF) bought the land for $905,000 and proposed to create affordable housing, low-cost retail space, and preserve the historic building. The restoration and affordable housing project won approval from the MVC and town regulatory boards after more than a year of bitter neighborhood opposition, but failed when the housing fund was unable to raise $1.3 million in private donations to complete the project. In 2010, in an attempt to make the property more attractive to a buyer, the IAHF applied for a permit to demolish the Denniston building. The asking price for the one-half-acre lot was $975,000. The housing fund had already invested $1.2 million in the development, and faced a monthly mortgage payment of about $6,000. Mr. Viaggio then bought the property in 2011.
An April 2015 letter from civil engineer Kent Healy stated, “The building is in poor condition, and to make it habitable would require a new foundation, reconstruction of first and second floor framing, a new roof, complete replacement of the plumbing, heating, and electrical systems, and the septic system.”
“It’s only gotten worse since then,” Mr. Viaggio said on Tuesday. “Windows are literally falling out of the frames. It’s too deteriorated to move. The only thing you could do is take it apart and put it back together somewhere. It’s not feasible. I’d be more than happy to acknowledge the history of the location with a plaque.”
Mr. Viaggio said that he has no specific plans for the property at present.
“My plan right now is to make a bigger garden,” he said. “When I have a clean [permitting] slate, I’ll start thinking about design.”
Mr. Viaggio said he is leaning toward mixed-use development, possibly retail stores with top-of-the-shop housing. “Why wouldn’t I do something that zoning already allows?” he said.
Part of the lot is zoned R-1, and part is zoned B-1. There is a certified five-bedroom septic on the property.
“I think my neighbors know I’ll do something nice when the time comes,” he said. “Things are turning around in the area.”
Bradley Square recently got an aesthetic boost when Mr. Viaggio moved two 16-wheel truck trailers from the abutting lot on Dukes County Avenue.
Also, 99 Dukes County Avenue, a long-vacant mixed-use building directly across the street from Bradley Square, formerly the site of Pik-Nik, was recently purchased by Stroudsburg, Pa., resident Valerie Francis for $575,000. The deal was brokered by David Lott, owner of Vineyard Open House Real Estate. “She’s bought into the art-oriented nature of the area,” Mr. Lott told The Times on Wednesday. “She’s meeting with an architect and builder, and she’s looking at making it a mixed-use property. She loves the area, and she’s very enthusiastic about helping to restore its art district profile. You couldn’t have a better person buy that property.”
Correction – an earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the Island Affordable Housing Fund (IAHF) is defunct. The IAHF was “inactive” from 2012 until 2016, when a donation of $100,000 from the estate of Marianne Dorrit Pfau enabled the IAHF to donate $23,400 to the Dukes County Regional Housing Authority, $25,000 to the Island Housing Trust, $33,500 to Habitat for Humanity and $7200 to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission towards the Housing Production Plan, according to IAHF accountant Kimberly Angell.