Nantucket Board of Appeals denies developer's notice of project change, cites fire and public-safety concerns

The Town of Nantucket Board of Appeals on April 14, 2025, voted 5-0 to deny the project as proposed in the applicant’s Notice of Project Change and authorized Chair Susan McCarthy to sign the written decision on the board’s behalf.

The board’s unanimous vote followed several hours of edits to a draft decision prepared by town counsel and extensive discussion about which pieces of testimony to include. George Pucci of KP Law, counsel to the board, described revisions he made to the draft and removed a law-review hypothetical that he said was not essential to the board’s findings. "The latest version I sent Billy is . . . a track change of the final version that was sent Friday that addresses those paragraphs," Pucci said during the meeting.

The nut graff: the decision summarizes the board’s conclusion that local safety concerns and other issues described in its findings outweigh the proposal as presented. Board members repeatedly pointed to testimony about a past large fire (the Veranda House incident), concerns that the island lacks immediate mutual-aid capacity for major emergencies, and…