voices: the community speaks of Nantucket and GHYC

I am very concerned about the prospects for the Great Harbor Yacht Club. As a summer visitor for the last 57 years, I feel such a "great" club would irrevocably change our small harbor environment for the worse. Here's how the scenario works:

There once was a small marina -- the Bahia Mar -- located in Fort Lauderdale. It grew and grew over the years into the megayacht mecca of the South. It now dominates the once small-town harbor of Ft. Lauderdale and has spawned mega facilities ashore, totally changing the character of the lovely little town.

Nantucket, with the best deep-water harbor in New England and fine boat basin is already becoming the Lauderdale of the North -- even without such a grandiose facility for the rich and famous as is proposed.

A Great Harbor Yacht Club would incite even more mega-trappings in this fragile corner of the Harbor at The Creeks. Its wealthy members would bring ever greater pressure for more slips, more dredging to accommodate deeper draft mega yachts, more noise and pollution. Their proposed 79-slip floating dock system, 1.7 acre marina would just be the start.

As demand grows, these promoters will come back year after year asking for more and more invasion of our Harbor -- just like they did in Fort Lauderdale. Our Harbor is full enough.

Respectfully submitted,
Jeffrey C. Lovelace

 

cc: Nantucket Planning & Economic Development Commission