Select Board Decides No Major Moves On Beach Concessions - For Now

What’s next for Nantucket’s beachside concessions? Not much, yet.

The most meaningful decision during Wednesday's Select Board discussion was to authorize the town to use existing funding, if approved by the Finance Department, to renovate the bathrooms in the tennis concessions building at Jetties Beach.

More substantive proposals for broader changes to the concession buildings were postponed, mainly because of a lack of funding.

The town recommended substantial improvements to the primary Jetties Beach concessions building, which currently hosts the popular Sandbar restaurant, but right now, the funding for those renovations doesn’t exist. The town expects the coastal resilience work will cost $6 million alone, and with the Select Board currently in the middle of a prioritization process that has stripped hundreds of millions from the town’s capital improvement plan, it’s unclear when that money will be appropriated. At this point, the town’s goal is to have a defined plan and funding in place by the time the current lease expires in 2031.

Similarly, the town intends to use the remainder of the existing lease term for the Surfside Beach concessions building to decide how to go forward with the space. One option would be to add a food truck to the site.

The final concession space, at Children’s Beach, has been a persistent thorn in the town’s side since 2011. Most of the Select Board’s comments, and the majority of the community input received during the discussion, related to Children’s Beach.

Town staff detailed a lengthy history of issues at the site, including waived payments, low foot traffic, and poor building conditions in a presentation to the Select Board.

The presentation included a recommendation to relocate or demolish the existing Children’s Beach concessions building and replace it with a concrete slab and a food truck, but the concrete slab proposal never received serious consideration from the Select Board on Wednesday. The food truck, however, did.

Multiple Select Board members suggested using the existing building at Children’s Beach for storage and perhaps a kitchen, while adding a food truck to the site for actual operations.

They were skeptical of spending too much on the building.

“To put $3 million into that building, it just doesn’t make sense,” DeCosta said. “It’s never really worked at anything because of the location.”

One reason for the town’s recommendation to demolish or relocate the existing structure was that the necessary renovations would trigger compliance with coastal resilience guidelines, which would cost $2.l to $4.6 million, a sum no one wanted to spend.

That may not actually be true, however. Town of Nantucket preservation planner Holly Backus said that the Children’s Beach concessions building is considered a historic structure and, as such, could be exempt from that requirement. She added that historic preservation funding may be available for work on the building.

Ultimately, the Select Board voted to bid out one more three-year lease for the Children’s Beach concessions building before making any major changes. That lease may go to The Surf, which currently operates both the Children’s Beach and Surfside Beach concessions buildings.