A controversial housing development in Vineyard Haven, intended to house as many as nine Vineyard Wind workers in a residential district, is set to appear before the Martha’s Vineyard Commission on Thursday.
Many residents anxiously await the commission’s decision, and are worried that the building project could set a precedent in Vineyard Haven, leading it down a path to becoming a company town for offshore wind and other industries.
Tension between town officials and developer Xerxes Aghassipour is also ramping up before Thursday’s meeting, as he is claiming that in new documents he obtained, planning board officials are targeting him and treating him unfairly. To support this, Aghassipour has submitted to the record a number of unflattering text messages between planning board officials that he obtained through a records request.
Overall, Aghassipour’s plans for 97 Spring St. include a nine-space parking lot, and the property now has nine bedrooms and seven washer/dryer hookups, according to the referral. The previous house at that address had three bedrooms, and was demolished in January.
On Thursday, the commission will decide whether to take up the project for review as a development of regional impact, or instead decide to send the matter back to Tisbury officials. If the commission accepts the project for review, it will hold further public hearings, and can impose restrictions on the project.
The Tisbury planning and health boards’ referral touches upon a wide range of debates that residents and officials have aired this year. They state that town zoning bylaws prohibit the property’s use as workforce housing. The referral also claims that the demolished property was historic and demolition was improperly permitted, and that the project threatens the character of its neighborhood.
Some town officials argue that the commission is the last option they have before construction is ultimately approved. But the project’s developer, Xerxes Aghassipour, has said that there would still be time left for any concerned officials or residents.
When construction is complete, Aghassipour will apply for a certificate of occupancy. In this stage, the town building inspector has to ensure that the project complies with local bylaws before allowing people to move into the property. Aghassipour has added that if he receives this permit, there will be 30 days to appeal the permit to the zoning board of appeals.
But a planning board official disagrees.
“For the planning board, that would be it,” board member Ben Robinson said of the possibility that the commission sends the project back to the town.
“I think many people are hanging their hats on the occupancy,” he said. “It’s usually a foregone conclusion at that point.”
He added that it is atypical to wait until the occupancy stage to determine a property’s use. “There are not many residential uses in a residential district,” he said. “There are accessory apartments or guesthouses. The assumption is, you’re doing something that’s allowed. You don’t wait for the occupancy permit to see what’s allowed.”
And just days before the commission’s meeting, tensions increased as Aghassipour criticized planning board officials and called the referral inaccurate.
In a letter filed with the commission, the developer said that he initiated a public records request in July, as he was concerned by what he saw as falsehoods spread by town officials about 97 Spring St. and 123 Beach Road, another of his projects.
“The [public records] documents produced reveal a disturbing pattern of contemptible and offensive communications between the Planning Board Administrator, Ms. [Amy] Upton, and the former Planning Board Chair, Mr. Robinson, towards me and other town officials who may disagree with their viewpoints,” Aghassipour wrote, adding that he and other town officials have been falsely accused of colluding with each other to violate the law.
He also wrote that Robinson and Upton have repeatedly lied about his project and the timing associated with it in order to obstruct workforce housing development for Vineyard Wind.
The Times has not obtained the breadth of documents provided in that records request. Aghassipour’s letter includes five images of texts between Robinson and Upton from May, showing them discussing himself, concerns that his project appears to be dormitory housing, and questioning town officials’ objectivity.
A significant portion of the text messages concerns Upton’s reaction to a meeting this spring between building inspector Greg Monka, Aghassipour and town administrator Jay Grande. Monka requested this meeting after issuing a stop-work order on the project, as he wanted to review the building’s proposed use and occupancy. At the meeting, Aghassipour stated his intent to rent the building to a company to house Vineyard Wind workers. Monka lifted the stop-work order shortly after, reminding Aghassipour that he needed to comply with town bylaws in order to receive a certificate of occupancy.
Upton’s texts show her disapproval of the meeting. “Presumably you read the latest letter regarding 97 Spring st. and the meeting of the old boys [sic] club at 4 State Rd, deciding to ramrod ahead and lift the stop work order and then deal with the use question at a later date, knowing full well that the building inspector is already entirely in collusion with the developer and will never enforce or refer to the equally conflicted ZBA chair,” Upton wrote to Robinson.
Upton also uses pointed language in a later text. “It would appear that Jay, Greg, and [X]erxes are all in a big circle jerk,” she wrote.
Upton told The Times this week that her “circle jerk” comment was specifically in reference to the spring meeting, that she intended a meaning similar to “echo chamber” and that she did not understand the meaning of the term she used at the time.
When asked about Aghassipour’s statements that he and Upton had repeatedly lied about his project, Robinson told The Times that he had read the letter and did not understand what in particular Aghassipour was pointing to.
“I didn’t see what he was specifically talking about,” Robinson said.
In addition to the commission’s Thursday meeting, which will begin at 6:30 pm on Zoom and at the commission offices at 33 New York Avenue in Oak Bluffs, the commission will visit 97 Spring Street at noon on Thursday. No deliberation will occur during that visit.
What is the problem? I never saw this much opposition when someone opened a bed and breakfast! I think it’s bad manners, and it smacks of Being stingy!
Maybe it’s time to pull up stakes and pull out Wind Turbines from our coveted waters and call it a day 😉🤷♀️
Some clarification of terminology is in order. The project in no way even resembles a legal dormitory designation. We operated dormitory-style housing on Circuit Avenue in Oak Bluffs. We are talking 4 or 6 beds per room. Inexpensive, basic, housing for summer workers. Beds are simply lined up. This is not dormitory in any manner whatsoever. Just to be clear …
Spring Street is overburden with a lack of parking, and a poor infrastructure of a road system. The new Tisbury School has turned Spring into the new State Rd. The residents who have single family homes are finding it difficult navigate the roads without proper planning in the neighborhood. Also, the building was over 100 years old which was torn down quickly. This developer has the former Educomp building with an aggressive plan of development; again no real plan for handling the burden of traffic in an extremely tight area. He is looking at profit while comprising a residential neighborhood. The Town of Tisbury should have thought about its neighbors!
I guess it’s good news that the island is all set with housing for workers.
Wow, read those text messages contained in the letter that the article links to
Are we really to believe Ms Upton was unaware of what she was referring to? If you look up the screen shot of her text ( page 16 of the letter to the MVC) on the MVC site, you will see that she referred to Town Counsel as well.
Ms Upton is the administrator for the planning board, she doesn’t hold a seat on the board. She has taken the reigns to take down the Developer, the Town Administrator, the Building Inspector, the Chair of the ZBA along with Town Council. This is unbecoming of a town employee and now she is running for MVC? Give me a break. I also have an issue with a seated PB member (Ben Robinson) being on both the PB AND the MVC. The PB refers to the MVC…I see a major conflict there.
An environment in which a person is exposed to only those beliefs and opinions that agree with their own aka “circle jerk”
bubble hugbox
cult groupthink
herdthink religion
filter bubble mutual admiration society
hive mind Discord channel
Reddit sub Telegram chat
collection of like minds
Does Tisbury have an employee media policy?
Ms Upton I would implore you to research the derivation of the phrase ”circle jerk” It does not become you.
Wow! Are you doubling down on your disgusting behavior!
It has been my experience when someone has been caught saying or doing something embarrassing that any public response other than an apology is a mistake.
But where are the permits to remove a building that is over 100 years old? Since when is a single family home a 9 bedroom 5 laundry 11 bathroom building that is flat out being told it’s going to be basically a hotel for employees. How is that legal in a one family zoned area? That’s the real question. Why didn’t it have to go through approvals to be done in the first place? Wasn’t there emails prior to this with Jay grand stating that formal approvals would cost the owner money so just approve it and keep moving?
And has anyone seen the amount of power they just put in that building ? They have I believe 3 of the Huge can transformers and one or two of rhe normal smaller ones in the pile just outside that building. Not even the town hall another block down has that kind of power to it. Did you see the plans of the parking spaces they want? They aren’t even accessible from their own property. One side of the vehicle sits against the other property line and you can’t get into your vehicle without walking on the neighbors property to do so. I’m all for work force housing and changing Zoning laws on this island to accommodate year round employees, along with seasonal. And transient. But this is not that. This was never approved the right way. This is done on the sly. And shoved through.
If the town employees, who are charged with management and bylaw enforcement, are going to let this slide through, your next door neighbor can do the same thing. It sets a precedent. If we must have multiple units in one dwelling, as described above, then we need to plan for them. Approving a nine bedroom house intended for employee housing built in a single family residential district is wrong. Since when do the town’s hired employees, who may not live in Tisbury, get to bend and break the bylaws? Isn’t the building inspector also the zoning enforcement officer? We need to strengthen our bylaws, not weaken them.
What happened to integrity and manners? Amy Upton is unfit to work in town government in any way. We now may have yet another discrimination lawsuit against the town. Xerxes Agassipour is more than able to fund a lawsuit. Liability insurance does not cover discimination because discrimination is illegal. Discrimination awards cost the taxpayers. The article today in the Times gives the amounts Cheif Leland was been paid on leave, and the costs to investigate. It also mentions he said he will sue for discrimintaion. Kindia Roman, T.M. Silvia and David Wayfield, to name a few, have been awarded discrimination amounts.
Ms. Upton, your list is probably not from any thesaurus I’m aware of. A tad disingenuous I think. Why not just drop it?
Let’s not get distracted by some language in a text or email.
The important issue is the process and the end result for the town of Tisbury.
Re “company town,” I was surprised to see in the Times article that I am not the only person who has arrived at the use of this term and the sense that this is what Tisbury is fast becoming.
Vineyard Wind has rapidly accrued far too much power to get what it wants in Tisbury. Mr. Aghassipour is riding the Vineyard Wind slipstream carrying the “workforce housing” banner, running circles around the select board and other town boards.
In a letter published in the MV Times on October 21, 2021, in which I noted the paucity of benefits to Tisbury and the Island of Vineyard Wind’s Marine Terminal I wrote, regarding jobs:
“4. Jobs. About 40 jobs seem to be the only direct benefits of the project to the Vineyard. But are there any guarantees that the jobs will be filled by Vineyarders? Is this even legally possible for a project that receives state and federal subsidies?”
The promise of jobs has always been the carrot held out the Island regarding the supposed benefits of the Vineyard Wind project and its spinoffs.
In their discussions and agreements, Mr. Aghassipour and Vineyard Wind seem to have worked on the premise that the promised jobs would NOT go to Islanders already living here, but would bring in new people who need “workforce housing.” Mr. Jay Grande, the town administrator, appears to have gone along with the idea of ignoring zoning and other local laws and ruining Vineyard Haven neighborhoods for the benefit of Mr. X and Vineyard Wind and other real estate scofflaws.
The window for submitting a public comment to the MVC about this project (DRI 12024) closes tomorrow, Oct. 31, at 5 p.m. Comments can be submitted to Rich Saltzberg and Lucy Morrison: saltzberg@mvcommission.org ; morrison@mvcommission.org.
Here you can read the correspondence already submitted:
https://www.mvcommission.org/dri/summary/12024/64081
No more demolishing century-old houses.
No more “demolition by neglect.”
No more real estate developer mission creep.
No more underhanded dealings and prevarications that negatively impact Tisbury and Tisbury residents.
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