Owners of the historic Inn at Shearer Cottage in Oak Bluffs have opted not to follow through with prior plans to renovate and expand the property.
At their meeting Thursday evening, Martha’s Vineyard Commissioners OKed the request from property reps to surrender the project on the basis that they’ve yet to break ground. According to the applicant’s agent Jonathan Holter, nearly two years after the commission voted for its approval, the project has been “abandoned.”
The Shearer property consists of two buildings: a main, two-story cottage with three bedrooms, and a separate one-story building with three rooms.
In 2021, applicants Eric Van Allen and architect Chuck Sullivan came before the commission proposing to increase the Shearer Cottage from six to 15 bedrooms by gut-renovating the two-story main cottage to include five bedrooms, demolish the existing one-story building, construct a new, two-story building with eight bedrooms, and construct a new one-story building with two bedrooms.
If the work were to be completed, the total square footage would nearly triple, from a little over 3,000 square feet to around 9,000 square feet.
Additional deck and porch space would have increased from 906 square feet to 2,085 square feet.
“If the commission accepts a surrender, the DRI decision will have no further effect, and will be deemed never to have been issued,” the MVC staff report says.
MVC chair Joan Malkin explained that this way, any potential future owners can submit project proposals without the previously approved — and abandoned — work interfering. “It’s as if [the DRI] never existed,” she said.
Commissioner Fred Hancock explained that when the MVC last updated its DRI procedures, a provision was included that would allow applicants to surrender their proposals.
Like all DRIs, applicants have two years to begin work on an approved project.
If work had already been done on the Shearer Cottage expansion, Hancock explained that the commission would need to decide whether the request to surrender the project was worthy of a public hearing.
It was determined that no substantial construction or renovation had taken place.
“There’s nothing to do but approve the request,” commissioner Doug Sederholm said before moving against a public hearing and approving the surrender.
Commissioners agreed in unanimous vote.
In other business, a request by property owners to divide their 42-acre parcel near Lake Tashmoo into nine lots, one for agricultural use and eight for building, was approved by the commission.
The request, submitted by Janet and John Packer, trustees of the Paradise Land Trust, had said that the subdivision of their Northern Pines Farm in Tisbury was part of a reorganization of the estate.
Under its statue, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission must review proposed divisions of 30 or more acres into six or more lots.
The proposed family subdivision is located within the Tashmoo watershed; nitrogen calculations provided by the applicants were reviewed and checked off by commission staff.
