A controversial Vineyard Haven property — intended to house as many as nine Vineyard Wind workers in a residential district — faces new obstacles this week, as a resident is suing over the project in Massachusetts Land Court.
Mary Bernadette Budinger-Cormie, a next-door neighbor to 97 Spring St., is seeking judicial review, naming as defendants the town of Tisbury, developer Xerxes Aghassipour and two companies working with him on the project, and the town building inspector, and five of six zoning board of appeals members.
Budinger-Cormie, representing herself in the lawsuit, has since the spring of this year inspired local resistance to the project, citing improper conduct by officials and development plans that threaten to impede on her neighborhood of mostly year-round, working residents.
She is asking the court to annul the zoning board’s Oct.10 decision to uphold building inspector Greg Monka’s removal of a stop-work order he issued on the property.
The 62-point complaint calls the property a lodging house, designed for uses not permitted in its district, such as community living or transient, high-density housing.
This comes at an already challenging time for the project. The Martha’s Vineyard Commission, the Island’s regional planning agency, decided a week ago to accept 97 Spring St. into its thorough review process, which could impose restrictions. Construction is set to finish in about a month’s time, according to Aghassipour, but receiving a permit to occupy the property will likely be delayed for months during the commission’s review.
While Budinger-Cormie’s filing centers around the zoning board of appeals’ Oct. 10 meeting, it includes criticisms of the development’s permitting journey in town, many of which have already been voiced publicly amid scrutiny of the development this year.
By permitting the project’s construction as a single-family residence in October 2023, the suit states, the town appeared to be offering Aghassipour carte blanche for a project whose site plans heavily suggested workforce housing.
The complaint states that the property demolished at 97 Spring St. before Aghassipour began construction was more than 100 years old, which would have required referral to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission. It also claims that the project violates a town bylaw preventing fractional ownership of a home in a residential neighborhood.
Aghassipour, for his part, has defended his project several times publicly, stating that he has followed proper procedure, and that the town can regulate the use of his property once construction is complete.
Many complaints in the lawsuit focus on the town zoning board of appeals. One section states that board chair Jeff Kristal told Budinger-Cormie on June 5 on the phone that Aghassipour’s intended use of the property was “100 percent commercial usage,” which should not be allowed in its residential district.
“He … thought he [Aghassipour] was not a very smart person, and if he thought he could
get away with building a commercial structure in a residential R10 in Tisbury, then he
could think again,” Budinger-Cormie stated of the phone call between Kristal and herself.
The filing scrutinizes multiple aspects of the board’s Oct. 10 meeting. Budinger-Cormie writes that the board upheld the stop-work order’s removal without questioning Aghassipour, and that the board provided poor public access for its meeting.
That stop-work order was before the board at the meeting due to an appeal from Budinger-Cormie, and the stop-work order was initially issued in May due to a request she made to Monka.
The meeting can be viewed at this link: bit.ly/TisburyZBA_October10.
“The ZBA administrator failed to provide the public with the passcode for the Zoom link. Many of the remote abutters and residents were unable to access and participate in the meeting,” the complaint reads, adding that the Zoom password link was left off the agenda posted before the meeting.
Due to this, many residents could not access the meeting live, while the password for Zoom was available instead in person, she argues. “A handwritten password was taped to the table in front of the ZBA members. No announcement was made, or any attempt to let the plaintiffs or the abutters know that there was a Zoom password access omission,” the suit reads. “All members of the defendant’s attorney’s firm … and attendees for other cases had the password, and were virtually present at the start of the meeting.”
After the issue was pointed out at the meeting, planning board member Ben Robinson asked for the meeting to be canceled per Massachusetts open meeting law, but this request was denied, the complaint states.
“Many of the Zoom participants were unable to raise their hands to speak, and/or their requests were ignored. The Zoom participants were ultimately cut off from the audio and the meeting,” the complaint continues.
“The town administrator, the ZBA at the behest of the chair of the ZBA, the building inspector defendant Greg Monka, and the defendant Aghassipour colluded during the permitting construction phase of this property, and they failed to follow the proper town procedures, effectively bypassing all systems and guardrails,” Budinger-Cormie wrote.
The suit also mentions that Kristal and fellow board member Akeyah Lucas filed appearances of conflicts of interest before two of their meetings, something the board acknowledged during the Oct. 10 meeting. But neither of them recused themselves due to those filings.
Kristal’s appearance of conflict of interest states that he shares an attorney with Aghassipour’s lawyer, Peter Brown, for another case that he is involved in in Land Court.
Lucas’ states that her husband was paid approximately $150 for code and construction consultant work at 97 Spring St., and that he has performed work for two other Aghassipour properties.
The suit also alleges open meeting law violations at the board’s August 8 meeting.
Kristal was not immediately available for comment.
