The Five Corners intersection is a funnel for people, cars, freight, and, maybe most consequentially, water. Just an inch and a quarter of rain is almost a guarantee that the intersection, as well as a significant portion of Beach Road, will flood and thereby impede access to a vital emergency and transportation route on the Island.
The problem has plagued the Island for generations, but has intensified through increased rainfall, sea level rise, and worse storm surge brought on by climate change. For many years, local, county, state, and even national entities have studied and envisioned how to fix the problem, but they have failed to make any tangible headway.
But now, after a summer and fall when there were several instances where the vital corner that connects the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital and the Steamship Authority’s main terminal was inundated and closed to traffic, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission (MVC) announced a $387,000 grant award from the state Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Program that may finally begin to address the problem head-on.
Using language laced in bureaucratic speak, the grant is for “long-term resilience vision with near-term practical actions and mid-term planning.” The plan is to build on previous studies, of which there are many, conducted on the Beach Road area, which mostly focused on immediate scenarios instead of long-term, Sakiko Isomichi, climate resilience planner for the MVC, said.
The town of Tisbury also received $500,000 for the “planning, technical analysis, stakeholder coordination, and preliminary engineering for the Five Corners/Beach Road corridor,” through a state Community One Stop for Growth, part of the Executive Office of Economic Development. Sean Young, local building inspector and conservation agent for the town of Tisbury, said the grant can be used to get a project to “shovel-ready,” though there is currently no construction proposed. Separately, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT), which owns Beach Road as a state highway, is at work on redesigns of the outfall system, which is supposed to direct groundwater out to the harbor.
The several grants and an approved short-term plan mark what officials hope is a watershed to address issues at Five Corners and Beach Road.
Standing (roughly) by the doors of Stop and Shop, looking toward Five Corners, after the 1938 hurricane. —Courtesy Martha’s Vineyard Museum 
Standing between the Citgo station and Boch Park, looking toward Five Corners, after the 1938 hurricane. —Courtesy Martha’s Vineyard Museum 
Standing roughly where the Shipyard Office is, looking down Beach Road toward Five Corners, after the 1938 hurricane. —Courtesy Martha’s Vineyard Museum
A flooded Five Corners isn’t a new development; it’s become almost routine for the Island. Water Street, which hosts Stop & Shop now, and leads to the ferry, and Lagoon Pond Road, which goes from Five Corners past the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, used to be a six- to seven-foot-deep channel called Bass Creek, according to Bowdoin Van Riper, research librarian at the museum. In 1835, the road was blocked, he said, by “sinking a worn-out schooner loaded with stone in what’s now Five Corners.” Tons of sand and gravel were dumped on Water Street and Five Corners in the remnants of the creek to create “made land,” Van Riper explained, comparable to the fill that was used to establish the Back Bay in Boston.
Beach Road used to be a barrier beach only a foot or two above sea level, historical records show, which means the land between Beach Road and Lagoon Pond Road was just water. The former area of the creek where Chicken Alley and the marina stand today, which were shallow tidal wetlands, wasn’t filled until the 1930s and early 1940s, which Van Riper said only made “flooding at Five Corners worse, because rain and storm-surge water couldn’t be soaked up as quickly.” The same is true for Veterans Park, located behind the Post Office, which was created in the mid-1950s. The area used to be tidal wetlands, and was able to soak up water, such as runoff from higher ground at Causeway Road and Skiff Avenue.
Van Riper said historical records show Five Corners flooded from infamous hurricanes and storms in 1938, 1944, and 1954. But those were big storms, and today, Five Corners becomes inundated from seemingly regular rainfall, not only by storms that make the news. As global temperature rises, and because warmer air can hold more water vapor, there’s more potential precipitation, which can take the form of rain, ice, hail, or snow, in the atmosphere.
Kirk Metell, a born-and-raised Islander and director of public works for Tisbury, spoke at a panel called “Flooding and Island Infrastructure” at the Vineyard Haven library on Oct. 14. He said he used to get excited when there was a “good storm.” (Maybe he’d have a hurricane party.) But now he dreads when he watches the Weather Channel. His department oversees about 22 miles of paved roads in Tisbury, and a handful of outfall pipes, as well as 1,200 catch, or stormwater, basins, which are supposed to collect rainwater and runoff and prevent floods. But a lot of those basins are between 50 and 100 years old, and are a challenge to maintain, he said. The basins at Five Corners, he said, “get overwhelmed within minutes” from just an inch and a quarter of rain.
He’s hopeful that a MassDOT project to redesign the outfall system at Beach Road Extension, near the Black Dog Pier, is a short-term fix. The pipes there are supposed to drain the water empty, but because they sit near sea level, are clogged with sand and debris from the tide, and allow seawater to be pushed back up into the system. A redesigned outfall system is based on a layout by the University of New Hampshire Stormwater Center, and John Goggin, spokesperson for MassDOT, said that the department has a contractor, and alongside the town, plans to develop a “proposed scope of work and fee.” Once that is finalized, the project can advance to a design public hearing, he said.
“Is it going to fix the problem 100 percent? No, it’s not,” Metell said to the library’s audience. “However, it’s going to allow that water to drain a lot faster, and that’s really what we need to be pushing for.”
Some residents at the discussion were frustrated and wondered why there hasn’t been movement on ways to fix the area, despite several studies done over the past decade, especially in the long term.
Joe LaCivita, Tisbury town administrator, stood up and said he sensed the frustration: “I get it on all these studies that we’ve done in the past, and Tisbury, amongst other communities, was well-known to kick the can down the road. We are planning for long-term pathways.” He mentioned the $500,000 grant from the state to design to construct and said he hates grants too, because “they collect dust.”
Unlike the MassDOT project, the town-awarded grant, Young said, is for town-related efforts for a resilient harbor, and isn’t tied to a specific project yet.
As for the MVC grant and frustrations of just another study, Isomichi said there remains a problem, and it’s probably a reason why previous studies never went anywhere. While she said the frustration is valid, there isn’t an active group to propose designs and make shovel-ready projects. She said that part of the grant, which lasts two years, is to “build capacity,” or get a group of people together to make a project happen.
The MVC, she said, plans, isn’t government, and doesn’t have the bandwidth to solely take on this regionally critical area. But she said the plan is to do three sets of engagement sessions to include the public, as well as disseminate a survey to see what people want to see at Five Corners. She also said that previous studies didn’t look far enough into the future, and this study, which would look at 2050 as well as implementable short-term options for the next decade, would be geared in that way.
She echoed other leaders on the Island who don’t know exactly what Islanders want to see. In terms of Five Corners and Beach Road, that could be relocation or raised roads: “How do we make a decision of what should be happening, and what is the consensus of the community members?”
That process has already started to happen. Property owners in the area, which includes the Martha’s Vineyard Times offices, were invited to a discussion at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum on Oct. 21. There, Isomichi said that a finalized roadmap from the grant is projected to be done in early 2028, and the project has to end by June 2028. Project partners include the towns of Tisbury and Oak Bluffs, the hospital, the Steamship Authority, and MassDOT. Engineering and design is by Geosyntec and Copley Wolff Landscape Architects; research consultants are Urban Harbor Institute and UMass Boston; community engagement is led by Sea Change Consulting, based on the Island.
Debbie Packer of R.M. Packer Co. brought up fears of eminent domain, as well as clogged drain problems. Ted Gavin, the Island’s Steamship Authority board representative, said that utilization of the area, i.e. how many more people there will be on-Island in 2050, needs to be considered. Questions about the economic impact, especially due to projected sea levels, were also mentioned, as well as how this should be an Island-wide project, not just a Tisbury project, a reference to a trend in discussions about regionalization. And many audience members referenced other entities that should be involved in the larger discussion.
Though there isn’t a plan written in stone for any tangible projects yet, and ground won’t be broken soon, discussions across the Island made clear that Five Corners needs to be fixed.
“I’ve watched that area. I’m 56 years old now. It’s flooded my whole life. Flooded my mother’s whole life. We need to do something sooner than later, and fix it for us,” Metell said at the library.
