Stillpoint Martha’s Vineyard and the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank are making separate purchases to acquire 40 acres in West Tisbury. The deal was announced Tuesday.
Thomas Bena, a principal in Stillpoint, said his plan is to create an educational community space for Islanders, while the Land Bank preserves the property surrounding it.
Bena purchased 14 acres of the land, including a barn, for $2.3 million. The Land Bank is purchasing 26 acres along the Mill Brook for $2.5 million, using donations from the Land Protection Fund and the Martha’s Vineyard Community Foundation, James Lengyel, executive director of the Land Bank, said.
The deal is expected to be finalized later this month.
The land is being purchased from Claudia Miller, who purchased the property in 2008. Two existing single-family homes on the property will be sold separately.
A portion of the property where a barn is located will be used as a “gathering place for educational offerings, including but not limited to classes, discussions, meditation, and the arts,” according to a press release.
Ben Robinson, a Martha’s Vineyard commissioner, climate activist, and key member of the Stillpoint planning team, said in the release that much of the property will be open to the community. In order to maintain land authenticity and avoid detrimental ecological impacts, Robinson said, “when considering any sort of development, there needs to be a responsibility to do as little [damage] as possible.”
The property is located adjacent to Polly Hill Arboretum. It’s also located near the Francis Newhall Woods Nature Preserve, Seven Gates Farm, Crocker Pond, and the Mill Brook watershed.
Of watershed, Lengyel said in the release, conserving “large parts of it [helps to] protect drinking water, habitat, and the Tisbury Great Pond.”
The press release quotes “A Meeting of Land and Sea: Nature and the Future of Martha’s Vineyard” author David Foster’s approval of the project: “This project epitomizes what is needed to ensure the Vineyard’s future in the face of climate change and relentless development.”
Additionally, with an aim to “increase collaborative land protection,” the release states, the M.V. Land Bank along with the Land Protection Fund will “preserve the hiking trails and vistas along Crocker Pond and near Priester’s Pond, conserving 26 of the 40 acres.”
The Stillpoint organization was founded and conceptualized by Bena, founder and former creative director of the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival. “We’d like this to be a space where we can have difficult conversations about issues the Island is grappling with,” Bena told The Times.
Adding that he hopes the organization will give the Island community, regardless of one’s personal beliefs or opinion, a place where it can come together and learn from each other. “I think we agree on a lot of the same problems,” he said. “We want our kids to have a field to play on, we want our kids to have safe schools, [to know] they’re not going to get shot.” The space won’t completely solve these issues, said Bena, but being able to “hear each other” and bring people together is of utmost importance.
With his background in Buddhist philosophy, Jake Davis, mindfulness meditation retreat instructor and Stillpoint advisor and collaborator, plans to offer “a discussion series that would use quiet, rather than film, as a tool to bring conversations deeper” in a “nonconfrontational” way.
The property had been approved as a 13-lot subdivision when Miller purchased it.
“Without Claudia, none of this would be possible,” Bena said in the release. “She had the original vision to transform a 13-lot subdivision into a magical place to walk, be quiet, and enjoy nature.”
Bena said the nonprofit will close on the purchase on April 30, and is working “methodically” to prepare for an informational meeting with the West Tisbury planning board on May 2.
Looking forward to using this space to drum up support for Donald Trump’s 2024 Presidential bid!
The 40 Acres For A Mule rally. Sounds about right.
?⭐
I feel like maybe I am missing something here, Katie, so if so please do help me understand. If by “40 Acres For A Mule” you are referring to the 1860s policies for freed slaves in the South, then that would be a great topic for a discussion, perhaps connected to current issues of race and justice. As I commented to John in the this thread, we want to gather folks on the many sides of any topic, including this one. Speaking for myself, I am tired of preaching to the choir and hearing others do that. So perhaps not a rally, but certainly a series of careful, quiet, difficult discussions would be very welcome. Would you be interested in bringing your perspective to that kind of a thing?
JAKE ! Welcome to our Island and the comment section of the MV Times! where misinformation and vitriol for positive ideas are aired and create influence. I do hope that you enlist a full time professional mediator with this exciting new space . Listening and
( love) compromise are the only way foward. I will bring my list ……..
Thanks also for the suggestion of a full-time professional mediator, Beka. I’d love to hear any suggestions you have for sourcing funding as well as candidates for the position. Please do reach out to us through http://www.stillpointmv.org. In the meantime, what we did with Inwards was primarily to have the ground rules and form of the discussion itself incline participants towards really listening to each other rather than just shouting at each other.
Jake, thank you for your kind reply. I was just kidding. It’s hard to see ‘forty acres’ mentioned in close proximity to Trump without recalling his remarks to Michael Cohen and his lack of regard for Black & Native American land ownership. Given that, I found John’s comment a bit ironic.
I generally don’t participate in political exchanges and have learned to take things from certain commenters with a grain of salt. Sincere discussion is wonderful, but after trying to engage many, I learned there’s not often interest.
I appreciate the warm welcome, Beka. I am indeed new as a contributor to the comments section on MV Times, though not so much new to the island or to forums where misinformation and vitriol create influence. And I do understand, Katie, that some folks express their sentiments without intending to hold up their part of a sincere discussion. The trouble is that simply not engaging with that stuff seems to be allowing the local and national debates to sink to the lowest level, where people on all sides of these issues are just contributing insults and disdain for one another, rather than any workable suggestions for how to live & work collaboratively with folks they disagree with. So the experiment I am trying here – in this one comments section on this one article – is to see whether we can reverse that and raise the bar, simply by seeing any response as an opportunity to show what this mission looks like in action, by engaging each contributor with respect. Raising the bar doesn’t require that the original poster respond, it might only require that new contributors come to expect that any comments they make will be treated as if they are serious and sincere contributions.
The bid for a Falmouth Fast Ferry.
Jesus you just painted a big target on yourself.
Bravo, to Thomas and the Land Bank!
Dear John, we are delighted to see your interest in Stillpoint. We are very sincere about wanting this place to feel like it belongs to the whole community. Not just people who think the way I do, or you, but people on the many sides of any topic (including Trump). By understanding the good reasons people’s life experience has brought them to different values and different conclusions, we hope to make more progress than we can by trading insults.
Cheers to that!!
Oh my another MV Non Profit
The Island had made Non Profits an Art Form. Maybe guess it’s over 200! Although some are very worthwhile how many does Martha need???
Considering the endless needs on the island, can there ever really be enough?
Does Martha need Gayle?
Would Martha be better off without?
Hi Gayle, You’re asking a good question. When I thought about how best to provide the classes and events that we hope to offer, a driving force was to make them accessible to everyone. I have worked in both the for-profit and the non-profit worlds and really couldn’t see how a for-profit model would work. When I ran the MVFF, we had for years been wanting to try a “pay what you can” model. When Covid hit we were found an opportunity to do that, in our collaboration with the YMCA, for the Drive in. We could not believe how successful that model proved to be. People that couldn’t afford a night out could still go to the drive in, only because of the generosity of people who had means. It is this same philosophy behind Stillpoint, we hope to structure all of our events as pay what you can, so that all of our events are accessible to all of our community. That said, I’m curious to know of other models that you think would prove more successful than non-profit.
“People that couldn’t afford a night out”? I just thought it was people who thought is was really cool to go to an outdoor movie theater. I didn’t realize they were all poor.
I didn’t see ”all” in his comment. He made a good point: I rarely go to the movies because of the cost but the “drive-in” made it affordable AND fun.
???
Thanks, David, I consider every response here an opportunity, perhaps the critical responses most of all. Seeing your disgust emoji, I suspect you might have a legitimate concern that makes real sense, and that we should pay attention to. One of my first academic philosophy teachers told us, when we have an emotional reaction to an idea, to really pay attention to that. The emotion is telling us something, and it is the seed of any important, thoughtful response. The work then is in refining and articulating a response that can be understood, considered, and acted upon by others. In this case, though, if there is an objection here, I need a little more help from you to get clear on what it is.
Congratulations, Thomas. I’m sure you’ll do good things with it and continue to uplift the island vibe for all. It’s all about community. Thank you for continuing to be a positive presence! ???
This is such a great outcome, an exciting venue for critical conversations in a beautifully crafted space in a wonderful setting. And the Land Bank’s participation preserves the wooded entry along North Road, vs. seeing several new houses.
I’m happy to see this, but it makes me wonder if this is what the founder and former director of the MV Film Festival wanted all along, which is a permanent place for the Film Festival to show movies? I seen to recall a brief attempt to purchase another property in West Tisbury a few years ago, but that was immediately abandoned when there was a huge outcry against it because of location and increase in traffic. With the wording of the purpose of the property “as a gathering place for…the arts” who’s to say it won’t be his back door to show the films? With two refurbished, empty, movie theaters and a year round state of the art theater on the Island, I would sincerely hope that’s not what will happen!
Mr Bena is no longer a part of TMVFF, as far as I know. He has been replaced by Brian Ditchfield.
There were two attempts by TMVFF to build a facility in West Tisbury. One was in the historic district and they attempted to circumvent zoning by claiming they are an educational body. After they realized that would not fly they entered into an agreement with the Polly Hill Arboretum to purchase adjacent land. That also fell through. The MV Times and the other island paper covered both stories extensively. I suggest you use the search function on either paper’s website to learn the details.
Hi Jim. You’re correct that Brian Ditchfield has taken over at MVFF. This is something that I am so grateful for. Other than that, these facts are incorrect. I’m happy to discuss this further with you. Please reach out through http://www.stillpointmv.org
By their very definition, facts cannot be incorrect. Nothing I said was inaccurate. It is all well documented in the local papers.
Your response raises a number of really important issues, Jim. To me the most interesting question in there is how to live and work together with people when we disagree, as we are here, about which are the facts. On a national, international, and local level, we have got to figure out a way to do that. One way would be to find common ground, at least on some ways of establishing what is true, and proceed from there. I’d be very interested to hear suggestions from you, or anyone else, on how to bridge divides like that. I have found that talking directly, in a forum where we can get a better sense of where the other is coming from, is a good start. Please feel free to reach out. https://www.stillpointmv.org/#contact
I think it would be fascinating to see a film component amongst all the art forms that exist in the world! Cheers to Thomas and team!
Hi Gayle, It’s a fair concern. Please know that it couldn’t be further from the truth. Stillpoint is a result of a “problem” I had with my work at MVFF. I had always wanted to gather people around important discussions and for two decades used film to do that. But I always felt like I wanted the conversations to go deeper and I wanted more time for them. When Jake and MVFF collaborated on his vision for Inwards, I learned that I also wanted to add moments of quiet to the discussions. I’m so grateful that Brian has taken the reins at MVFF and to Nevette at the MV Preservation Trust for her vision and generosity in providing a space for MVFF and their offices.
What’s the status of the “non profit” approval and what’s the in and out to be for traffic?
Hi Katy, Stillpoint has been approved as a not-for-profit educational organization. We have engaged a traffic study. I’m happy to discuss this further with you. Please reach out through http://www.stillpointmv.org
This space has the potential be a tremendous asset to the island community, congratulations Thomas, Jake and Ben for making this happen. Looking forward to amazing events for years to come.
I’m really excited to see what will happen at Stillpoint!