Opinion

As reported by the Nantucket Current this week, Alan Worden is seeking a long-term lease or license of 28.65 acres of Land Bank property at 41 Milestone Road for a public equestrian program connected to the proposed Hensdale Club.

 

I know and respect Alan, and appreciated his support of the Nantucket Independent when he and his wife ran Windwalker Real Estate. He’s been involved in worthwhile projects on Nantucket, and there is nothing inherently objectionable about proposing a community equestrian program. Riding instruction for young people, therapeutic programs, adaptive recreation and year-round opportunities for island families could all be valuable additions to Nantucket.

 

But a good idea does not automatically belong on public conservation land.

 

This is not simply a request to offer riding lessons. It's a proposal to develop nearly 29 acres of Land Bank property directly behind the 10.5-acre site where Worden is proposing the private Hensdale Club.

 

The question is not whether Alan Worden has good intentions. It's whether the Land Bank should begin allowing private developments to expand their operations onto neighboring public property by attaching a nonprofit or public-programming component to the request.

 

The answer should be no.

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Public Land Is Already Serving the Public

The central argument for the proposal is that Milestone Stables would be open to the public through an independent nonprofit organization. It would reportedly offer riding, horsemanship, youth instruction, beginner lessons and therapeutic and adaptive programs throughout the year.

 

That sounds compelling until we remember that the property is already public.

 

People do not currently need to register for a program, qualify for a scholarship, reserve a lesson, pay a fee or participate in a particular activity to use it. They can walk, explore, exercise, experience the woods or simply spend time outdoors.

 

Land Bank chair Kristina Jelleme described the property as heavily used by people living in one of the island’s most densely populated areas. Commissioner Neil Paterson made the point even more directly: the land is presently “completely open to the public.”

 

Converting it into paddocks, pastures, barns, maintenance facilities, boarding areas, roads and fenced enclosures would not simply add another public use. It would replace a broad, unprogrammed and universally accessible public use with a specialized activity serving a much narrower portion of the population.

 

The proposal’s first phase calls for a 10-stall barn, a three-bay maintenance garage with staff housing, paddocks, pastures, utilities, drainage infrastructure and a new entry road. Later phases could include an indoor riding arena, a boarding barn and still more recreational or agricultural facilities.

 

That is not the preservation of open space as Nantucket currently understands it. It is institutional development on conservation land. The Land Bank was established to acquire, hold and manage important open spaces for the use and enjoyment of the general public. Its properties are supported primarily through the island’s 2 percent real estate transfer fee. Through fiscal year 2024, the Land Bank had spent more than $421 million acquiring land on Nantucket.

 

Those properties should not gradually become a reserve inventory for adjacent private developments.

 

The Precedent Is Bigger Than This Project

Supporters will understandably argue that this particular proposal is different. It’s a nonprofit, will serve children, offer scholarships, provide therapeutic programs, and will be open year-round. 

 

But precedents are rarely created by proposals that sound unreasonable. They are created by attractive proposals presented by credible people for sympathetic purposes. Once the Land Bank establishes that its property may be leased on a long-term basis to an organization connected operationally and financially to a neighboring private development, it becomes much more difficult to reject the next request.

 

What happens when another private club proposes public tennis instruction on Land Bank property? What happens when a hotel offers to maintain a public garden, playground or trail system in exchange for using adjoining public acreage? What happens when a resort developer proposes a nonprofit environmental center, affordable day camp, workforce-training facility or community recreation program on protected land next door?

 

Each proposal will arrive with public benefits. Each will promise access. Each will claim to cost the Land Bank nothing. Each will be described as a partnership. And each will make the boundary between public land and private development a little less meaningful.

 

The Hensdale proposal demonstrates exactly why that boundary must remain clear. Although Milestone Stables would reportedly be organized as an independent nonprofit, the Hensdale Club would contribute millions of dollars toward its construction and launch. Hensdale staff and equipment would maintain the facilities through a property-management agreement. The developer has also indicated that this particular Land Bank parcel is desirable because it is adjacent to the club.

 

That doesn't necessarily make the program insincere. But it does make the public and private components inseparable in practical terms. A public amenity located behind and maintained by a private club would inevitably enhance the club’s property, programming, marketing and member experience, even when members of the general public are also permitted to participate.

 

The Land Bank should not place itself in the position of determining how much indirect private benefit is acceptable in exchange for a promised public program.

 

The Traffic Cannot Be Separated From the Club

The traffic consequences must also be considered as part of one cumulative development, not divided between a private club on one parcel and a supposedly independent nonprofit on another.

 

The proposed Hensdale Club would include equestrian facilities, swimming, racquet sports, gardens, a greenhouse, dining or gathering uses and other amenities. Worden has described a potential membership of approximately 580 families and an operation employing roughly 150 seasonal workers. The developer has acknowledged that additional traffic on Old South Road is a concern and has said that a traffic study will be completed. Now add a year-round public equestrian operation immediately behind it.

 

A riding program does not generate only the occasional passenger vehicle. It brings riders, parents, instructors, employees, volunteers, veterinarians, farriers, horse trailers, hay deliveries, feed deliveries, bedding deliveries, maintenance vehicles, manure removal, equipment servicing and emergency access.

 

Youth lessons create drop-off and pickup periods. Therapeutic programs may require specialized transportation. Boarding creates daily visits by horse owners. Competitions, clinics, demonstrations and fundraising events could produce concentrated traffic at specific times.

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An indoor arena would extend those operations through the winter and during poor weather. Future agricultural or recreational facilities would add still more activity.

 

This would be a fundamentally different transportation pattern from the parcel’s current use. People walking through open space arrive individually or in small groups. Their visits are generally dispersed, informal and relatively low-impact. Programmed recreation operates according to schedules. Lessons begin at particular times. Employees report for shifts. Deliveries arrive in commercial vehicles. Parents wait, circle, park and return.

 

Staff housing may reduce some employee trips, but it does nothing to eliminate member trips, public-program participants, parent drop-offs, service vehicles, horse trailers or deliveries. Nor should the analysis stop at the entrance to either property. Old South Road and Milestone Road are already among the island’s most heavily traveled corridors. The Town has been studying congestion, circulation and safety in the Old South Road area for years. Earlier transportation work evaluated intersections and road networks surrounding Old South Road, Fairgrounds Road, Amelia Drive and nearby neighborhoods because of existing operational and safety concerns.

 

The club and equestrian facility should therefore be evaluated as a single traffic-generating campus.

 

Allowing the private club to present one traffic study while the nonprofit stable is reviewed as a separate Land Bank use would understate the real cumulative impact. The two operations would be adjacent, financially connected, operationally connected and maintained through shared staff and equipment. For traffic purposes, they are one development.

 

The Planning Board and Land Bank should demand a complete cumulative analysis covering the private club, the stables, all proposed phases, employee housing, boarding operations, service traffic, event traffic and realistic summer peak conditions.

 

Anything less would be an accounting exercise rather than a transportation study.

 

Conservation Land Should Not Require Replacement Conservation Land

There are also serious environmental and legal obstacles. Land Bank officials have stated that the parcel is within priority habitat and that endangered species are present. Executive director Rachael Freeman estimated that development could require approximately 57 acres of off-site mitigation protected by a permanent conservation restriction.

 

Consider the absurdity of that possibility.

 

The Land Bank would allow nearly 29 acres of public conservation property to be altered for an intensive institutional use and then require approximately 57 acres somewhere else to compensate for the loss. Why should the public sacrifice one protected property and undertake the complicated process of replacing its conservation value in order to accommodate a facility connected to a neighboring private club?

 

The property may also be protected by Article 97 of the Massachusetts Constitution. Article 97 land generally cannot be transferred or converted to another use without a two-thirds vote and state legislative approval, and state policy seeks to prevent the net loss of protected open space. Those requirements are not inconvenient bureaucratic hurdles. They exist precisely to prevent public open space from being casually repurposed when an attractive alternative use is proposed.

 

The burden should not be on the public to prove why conservation land must remain conservation land,  it should be on the applicant to explain why the program cannot operate on private property or at another location that does not require the conversion of heavily used public open space and significant wildlife habitat.

 

So far, the strongest explanation for this particular location appears to be its proximity to the Hensdale Club. That’s a benefit to the club, not a sufficient reason for the Land Bank.

 

“No Cost to the Land Bank” Does Not Mean No Public Cost

The proposal states that Milestone Stables would fund and operate the program at no cost to the Land Bank.

But financial cost is only one form of cost.

 

There is the loss of unrestricted open space, the environmental cost of clearing and construction, the mitigation obligation, the additional traffic, the administrative responsibility of supervising a long-term ground lease, the difficulty of enforcing the division between the nonprofit and private club over decades, the possibility that the operating model, funding base or leadership may change. And, the precedent established for every other Land Bank property.

 

A long-term lease must be evaluated not only according to the promises made by the current developer, but according to what the agreement might allow under different leadership 10, 20 or 40 years from now.

 

What happens if donations decline, boarding revenue becomes essential, public programs are reduced while revenue-producing operations expand, the nonprofit struggles financially, Hensdale Club ownership or management changes, or the indoor arena, boarding barn and other future facilities become necessary to sustain the organization?

 

Public land should not be placed inside a business model that may eventually depend on continued expansion.

 

A Worthwhile Program Can Find an Appropriate Place

Opposing this proposal does not mean opposing horses, young riders, therapeutic recreation or Alan Worden. It means recognizing that worthwhile programs still require appropriate locations.

 

The Hensdale Club can include an equestrian component on the private land available to it, scaled to the acreage it controls. The nonprofit could explore partnerships with existing island equestrian operations. The Town or Land Bank could conduct a broader, transparent search for a suitable location if there is demonstrated community demand for a public riding program.

 

Such a process should begin with the public need and then identify an appropriate site. It should not begin with a private development that wants more room and then work backward to create a public program on the government-owned property next door.

 

If the Land Bank ever considers leasing conservation property for a specialized institutional use, it should do so only after establishing island-wide policies, competitive procedures and clear criteria governing such arrangements. It should not negotiate one proposal at a time based on the reputation of the applicant or the appeal of a particular program.

 

The rules created for Alan Worden will also apply to the next developer. That’s why this decision must be made with the next 20 proposals in mind, not merely this one.

 

The Land Bank Should Say No

The Land Bank Commission’s initial skepticism is justified. The proposed equestrian program may offer genuine benefits, and Alan Worden may fully intend to deliver everything being promised. But, neither point resolves the larger problem.

 

The property is already public. It's already used, already protected, and located in priority habitat. Its conversion could require extensive mitigation and state approval. The proposed operation would generate additional traffic and commercial activity in an already congested part of Nantucket. And its location would directly support and enhance a neighboring private membership club.

 

Nantucket doesn't need to establish a system in which developers can expand beyond the limits of their private property by offering public programming on Land Bank land. Once that door opens, it will not remain open only for equestrian programs, only for nonprofits or only for developers the community happens to know and like.

 

The Land Bank was created because Nantucket understood that some land must be protected from the pressures surrounding it. This is one of those pressures.

 

The Commission should decline the lease, preserve the property in its current public use and make clear that Land Bank acreage is not available as an expansion plan for private development.