voices: the community speaks of Nantucket and GHYC

Thomas Congdon
4 Pine Street
Nantucket MA 02554

December 13, 2003

Board of Selectmen

Dear Selectman:

That area at the end of Washington Street Extension is the only remaining stretch of the old working harbor-front. You can drive right down and see the boatyard and the beginning of the marshes. It's pleasantly scruffy down there, the way Nantucket used to be before it got turned into an expensive parody of itself. It has an honest feel to it.

Do we really want to let the harbor-front become a solid wall of exclusive private prosperity? A guard at a gate telling us to go away? That lovely salt-marsh and harbor vista suddenly cut off by yet another hulking heap of shingles? Too much traffic [in] the summer and none in the winter?

Atmosphere is a vital public asset. Close off that area to the people of Nantucket and we'll have lost something important to us, whether we consciously know it or not, and we'll never get it back.