To the Editor:
The time appears right for this 92-year-old damsel to provide background history for the intended expansion of the very successful Vineyard Montessori School next door to my family home for half a century, on Vineyard Haven’s Main Street.
Decades ago it was the Tashmoo Inn, until a young pyromaniac set it on fire, consuming the upper floor. It then morphed into a lackluster Sandpiper restaurant, whose owner also retained the tennis courts, which long ago the VHYC was eager to purchase, but never did.
A wealthy Greenwich, Conn., gentleman, along with local partners, decided to buy the property and build condominiums. It was at this crucial juncture that concerned neighbors and I, horrified at the prospect, became engaged in rallying the neighborhood to veto such a proposal.
The Greenwich entrepreneur and lawyer withdrew his offer, citing his concern of distressing his friends at the VHYC, who feared pollution of their and the abutting small town beach on Owen Little Way from greatly enlarged, probable/possible sewage runoff from the condo structures. Environmental Impact was, indeed, way back then, a major concern to us all.
I now suddenly find myself and hapless neighbors, public beach aficionados, including perhaps the VHYC membership, to be concerned anew. A 50 percent increase in student population from kindergarten through eighth grade, plus two more buildings to be constructed, including much-needed housing for its staff, in the original building, seems indeed ominous, and a repetitive scenario from our distant past, to be avoided yet again.
Much later, when we the neighbors met with the then planning board representative to voice our concerns re vehicle traffic, noise, etc., with the impending purchase of the same site for a Montessori school, he soothed our troubled minds by assuring us we had nothing to fear from a small, innocuous nursery school.
Years have elapsed, and I give kudos to Mrs. Jernegan, the school’s director, for creating a much-needed Montessori Childcare Centre. However, similar to the condo plan, a larger septic system and leaching field will obviously be required from the Main Street school location, with potential drain-off downhill into our town’s bathing beach area and VHYC, at the end of Owen Little Way.
I have survived long enough to witness how promises, and regulations, often or usually are supplanted by inevitable unwelcome changes in towns and residential neighborhoods. I foresee how this 50 percent increase in the school’s population, coupled with two more buildings, with daily usage year-round of an expanded septic system, might appear excessive. In addition, we currently are confronted by the ever-increasing vehicle traffic up and down Tashmoo, along with growing parking problems on Tashmoo Avenue, the school’s entrance and exit.
The intended expansion of the Montessori School, with its finest of motives, is so dissimilar to the Charter School’s excellent location choice in West Tisbury, where its outstanding growth over the years was far removed from private residential neighborhoods.
The original Tashmoo Inn was open only in the summer, as was the Sandpiper restaurant, which faded into oblivion; the condo scheme disappeared too. But now, confronted with the prospect of a monumental expansion of the Montessori School, I fear the loss of our still-lovely, quiet, residential neighborhood, combined with Tashmoo Avenue’s ever-increasing traffic and parking.
In conclusion, dare I mention the obvious negative impact of decreased home valuations in our area as a result? Candidly, who wants to live cheek by jowl, next to, or near a huge, humming educational complex? Definitely not I, nor likely any potential purchaser upon my inevitable demise.
Doreen Kinsman
Vineyard Haven
