Beach Plum Village is a new residential community on Nantucket Island. Featuring 40 single-family cottages of historic architectural design with brick sidewalks and beautiful landscaping, the community offers amenities including a landscaped park, an infinity-edge swimming pool, a fitness center, and a tennis court. The design fits in well with the island’s historic character. Affordable homes are permanently restricted at moderate prices and fully integrated with high-end market-rate homes, creating a model community serving people with a broad range of incomes. The success of the project has made a significant impact in reducing the level of resistance to urgently needed affordable housing, an issue considered one of the most pressing in this ultra-expensive, world-class resort community.

Nantucket is one of the most popular high-end summer resort communities in the United States, attracting wealthy vacationers to its pristine beaches, topflight restaurants and shopping, historic architecture, and natural landscape. Over 60 percent of the island’s land is preserved as open space. Housing prices are very high, especially in the summer. Too often, year-round residents are stuck in the “Nantucket shuffle,” renting a home from fall until spring but then forced to move out for the summer’s seasonal residents willing to pay higher prices, often in excess of $8,000 to $10,000 per week. Prices for even the most basic homes have skyrocketed in the last decade and are now at $1 million to $1.5 million. As a result, affordable housing for the people who make the island function—tradespeople, teachers, public employees, shopkeepers, restaurant workers, and the like—is very hard to find. While the need for affordable housing for Nantucket’s workforce is widely viewed as a critical issue for the island, development proposals for specific projects usually face significant local opposition from neighbors concerned about what is seen as “overdevelopment.” As such, the developer used the innovative density bonus of the Massachusetts 40B affordable housing law, which allows developers to override local zoning in any community that does not have 10 percent of its housing stock classified as “affordable.”

Beach Plum was developed on a 10-acre (4 ha) undeveloped parcel into 40 single-family lots. A 50-foot (15 m) no-build buffer on the entire perimeter of the development insulates Beach Plum from its lower-density residential neighbors. The cottage homes were then arranged to form a variety of lot sizes and shapes, giving the same feel of a comfortable historic village that is organic to Nantucket. The one- or two-story homes are clad in cedar-shingled roofs and siding, with historic colored trim, surrounded by many porches that carry the roof line close to ground. The homes have small private yards and patio spaces. All homes meet or exceed the high standards of the state’s energy code with energy-efficient systems and appliances. A beautiful, centrally located park with a gazebo, a children’s play structure, charcoal grills, a pergola, and a bocce court is a destination for walking, gathering, or meeting friends. An infinity-edged pool with ample lounge chairs and umbrellas creates a beautiful escape during the summer, right next to the park.

The 30 market-rate and 10 affordable homes are fully integrated throughout the entire site with identical exteriors, making it virtually impossible to know which is which. Interiors vary between luxury finishes for market-rate homes and solid, basic finishes for the affordable homes. The costs to build the affordable homes were greater than their restricted sales prices, which was offset by the profits from sales of the market-rate units, demonstrating that high-end summer homebuyers will purchase homes and live in a mixed-income, integrated community.

ULI created a virtual tour of Beach Plum Village, which you can access here.

Location: Nantucket, Massachusetts
Developer: Rising Tide Development LLC
Owner: Rugged Scott LLC
Partners: Design Associates, Cottage and Castle, Weinmeyer-Jay Associates, Hingham Institution for Savings, and Joelle Bouchard