Vacant stores and darkened windows on Main Street in Vineyard Haven have become not only an eyesore for all and a lost business opportunity for the Island, they have also raised a persistent question that voters put to the candidates in a forum last week as Tisbury goes to the polls on Tuesday, May 12.
The question is: What is the town going to do about this?
As the year-round gateway of Martha’s Vineyard, Tisbury, which includes the village of Vineyard Haven, is where Islanders come and go, where workers commute to job sites, and where visitors first see the Island after sailing aboard a Steamship Authority ferry. Just past the ferry line’s facilities is downtown Vineyard Haven, where on Main Street there are a few once-grand commercial properties that sit vacant and interrupt a line of vibrant shops. Some of these properties are a part of the real estate portfolio of the Hall family, which owns multiple properties across down-Island towns and has been the target of criticism for leaving hallmark theaters and formerly bustling storefronts vacant.
Revitalizing the town has been on the mind of local officials and business owners for a while, but some voters have made their calls for action public. At a recent meeting, the question of eminent domain was put forward to Tisbury select board candidates Constance Alexander and John Gregory Martino: Is it a tool that can be utilized to deal with empty storefronts in Tisbury?
Around 30 Tisbury voters gathered at the Tisbury Senior Center during an April 30 candidates’ forum hosted by the League of Women Voters of Martha’s Vineyard ahead of the elections next week. Among voters was Rachel Orr, Tisbury finance and advisory committee member, who highlighted some empty storefronts in Tisbury owned by “longtime property owners” who also have underutilized properties in other Vineyard towns. She wanted to know what the best way to address these properties would be and whether or not Tisbury could take a cue from its neighboring town.
“We’ve seen how Oak Bluffs has dealt with that situation with the eminent domain possibility in taking one of those buildings,” Orr said, referring to the Island Theatre, a property on Circuit Avenue in Oak Bluffs that voters approved, during their annual town meeting and election, to “take” from the Halls. Orr said eminent domain would be “kind of a big step” for Tisbury, but asked whether the candidates thought this, or another solution, was in the future for addressing the underutilized properties.
Eminent domain is a process that allows a municipality to take private property, with compensation to the owner based on fair market value, to use for a public purpose. A seizure recently occurred in Oak Bluffs with the dilapidated Island Theatre, though what the property will actually be used for remains uncertain. The Halls also had a property, the former Yellow House, taken from them in 2017 through eminent domain in Edgartown. It’s since become a Lululemon store.
Along Tisbury’s Main Street, there are several buildings with posters tacked on advertising for tenants. The most recent addition is the now boarded-up property that formerly housed Island Music, which closed late last year because it wasn’t able to financially recover after a car crashed into the building in August.
But the buildings that really raised the eminent domain question belong to Benjamin Hall Jr., an Edgartown attorney. In Tisbury, these include the Capawock Theatre and 35 Main St., the former home of Bunch of Grapes Bookstore.
While the Capawock, according to Hall, operates for around four months out of the year for various events, including a pop-up holiday mart in the winter, 35 Main St. hasn’t had a tenant since the bookstore moved 150 feet away in 2017.
Neither select board candidate was keen to pounce on an eminent domain seizure, instead both preferring to speak with property owners first to get a fuller picture.
Alexander called it an “issue of supply and demand,” and said that for busy property owners, the building may not be a priority for them “in certain circumstances.” But she added that the town would need to make an effort to make it a top priority.
“We need to engage in conversation, problem-solve, maybe come up with transitional opportunities between point A and point B,” Alexander said.
She added that there hasn’t been much conversation between town officials and the property owners, and she preferred to “work cooperatively and collaboratively.”
“The eminent domain piece can prove to be very expensive, and I’m not sure we are at that crux at this point and time,” Alexander said.
Martino said it would be important to know the owner’s intent with the property, whether that’s “demolition by neglect” or another issue. But he highlighted that more information was needed, from costs to a more concrete plan, before a decision could be made.
“I would look at it from all different angles,” Martino said. “What does eminent domain cost? What can the return be if we [take] that land, and what would we do with it?”
Martino agreed that discussions must happen first, but if an impasse is reached, then town officials will need to gather data and potentially bring a proposal to voters.
Hall told The Times that while the Capawock is occasionally used, actually renting or selling the property would require heavy amounts of renovations to convert it from a movie theater to another use. That includes complying with new energy codes, which adds to renovation expenses.
But for 35 Main St., Hall flagged lacking accessibility to wastewater as the primary cause for delayed plans, which he also attributed as the main reason the Island Theatre had sat empty for years. Hall said the building is permitted for a 130-seat restaurant, but he alleges that they suddenly lost wastewater flow and that there are incomplete town records regarding flow allocation to his property. Hall also said there was originally a chef who wanted to use the property, but the plans fell through following the COVID-19 pandemic as well as due to inaccessibility to wastewater.
Kirk Metell, Tisbury Department of Public Works director, and Joseph LaCivita, Tisbury’s town administrator, said while there had been wastewater flow allocated for 35 Main St., it had expired, and the allocation went to another property. Metell said wastewater allocations usually last a year, and the town had given Hall several extensions considering the pandemic.
“We would love to see something in that location,” Metell said. However, Metell and LaCivita said a plan and operator, which would be needed to consider how much flow could be allocated, had not been presented so far.
LaCivita said the property was in a “limbo” state and that the last time he’d spoken with Hall about the project was in 2025.
While Hall said there were other considerations for use of the Tisbury property, he deemed a restaurant to be the best use of 35 Main St. He said that he wants to lease out the property to someone who would run a year-round eatery with reasonable prices.
“We don’t want another T shirt shop,” Hall said, adding that he thinks of Tisbury as a “diamond in the rough to be a restaurant mecca.”
LaCivita didn’t rule out the possibility of eminent domain. “I firmly believe eminent domain has a place in local government, and Oak Bluffs made a fitting decision for that parcel [Island Theatre],” he said in a statement to The Times.
Before joining Tisbury, LaCivita was the general manager of Watervliet, N.Y., where, he said, there were instances in which eminent domain worked well and was “used as an economic engine to spur redevelopment.” LaCivita said Tisbury officials and residents will need to see “what transpires here” and determine what steps will make sense for the community.
But even if eminent domain seizure of certain properties is favored by the town, pursuing it might not be in the town’s near future. A February report compiled by the University of Massachusetts Boston’s Collins Center at the town’s request found that Tisbury needs to develop a plan to stabilize its finances and ability to borrow funds, especially with hefty capital projects, such as the renovation of Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School and construction of a new town hall, expected to cost the town tens of millions of dollars.
Despite costs, LaCivita said the town needs to keep tabs on the property. While there haven’t been discussions about possible eminent domain, LaCivita noted that Hall’s properties sit at the heart of Tisbury.
“You can’t lose sight of that property,” LaCivita said of 35 Main St.
In Oak Bluffs’ case, voters approved their town’s raising $5 million for the seizure, which includes various costs like initial improvements, legal fees, planning, and demolition of the theater; it does not include expenses of developing the actual property. Based on the warrant article, buying the property isn’t off the table, and the Halls have said the asking price for the Island Theatre is $2.8 million. Hall said he hasn’t heard from Oak Bluffs since the vote.
Hall told The Times he hopes that in Tisbury, cooler heads will prevail.
“You have to have faith in the leadership that there’ll be less vindictiveness,” he said.
At the forum, voters also got the opportunity to hear from candidates in other contested races: incumbent J. Hillary Conklin and Joanna H. Jernegan for town clerk, Betsy Carnie and Emma Kaitlin Kristal for board of health, and Bruce J. Campbell and Richard Wayne Homans Jr. for finance and advisory committee. (Campbell didn’t attend the forum.)
Tisbury will be holding its annual town election on May 12 at the town’s emergency services facility from noon to 8 pm. Voters will vote for a total of 20 seats up for re-election, and for two ballot questions asking for Proposition 2½ overrides that would allow the town to raise more in property taxes than the state limit. One question requests $1 million to fill a funding gap for school and town funding, while another requests the town be allowed to borrow $3 million to expand the town’s sewer collection system in the State Road sewer district. The full forum is available on the MVTV website.