The End Of The Downtown Fuel Tank Farm. Sort of.

"This is what we’ve been waiting for - for a long time," Nantucket fire chief Steve Murphy told the Select Board last week.

Murphy was talking about the ongoing dismantling of the downtown fuel tank farm, and the plan to install two new, smaller tanks to continue providing fuel to the Nantucket Boat Basin. The Select Board voted unanimously last Wednesday night to extend the existing bulk fuel licenses for the remaining tanks until the new ones can be constructed. The property owner, Winthrop Nantucket Nominee Trust, also submitted an application to license the two new fuel tanks - both 9,999-gallon tanks, one for gasoline and the other for diesel fuel - which was unanimously approved as well.

"They'll get these in place and operational so they can permanently remove the last three tanks," Murphy said. "It would be completed in the fall."

Serving essentially all marine traffic in Nantucket Harbor, the two new fuel tanks would be smaller than the previous large silos, and include new safeguards. Both tanks will be fortified with double walls and the required spill containment within the tank design. The tanks will be situated on and secured to a concrete pad to protect against tidal surge, while a concrete wall will surround both tanks to act as vehicle and debris protection in the case of flooding in the area. In addition, a large portion of the supply line from the tanks to the dock will be replaced with new lines.

The aging fuel tanks were previously operated by Harbor Fuel before the company moved its operations out of town to Industry Road, near the airport. Last May, Winthrop submitted an application to the Conservation Commission for approval to demolish eight of the 11 fuel tank. That work got underway in September, but hit a snag in October when asbestos was discovered in the gaskets of some valves.

The tank farm property is all that remains of Winthrop’s once sprawling portfolio of downtown island real estate, which it acquired from the late Walter Beinecke’s Sherburne Associates in 1986. In recent years, it has been selling its holdings, including the most recent sale in December 2020 of several downtown properties including Stop & Shop, The Haulover, Fresh, and Hepburn, to Steve Karp’s New England Development.

The fuel tank farm has long been eyed as a key property in the potential redevelopment of what has become known as Harbor Place, the waterfront area that stretches from Straight Wharf to the town pier off Washington Street. For more than a decade, the town has worked to bring the disparate property owners together to pursue a unified vision for the waterfront, an effort that has produced more frustration than progress.

The town is now exploring the possibility of acquiring the fuel tank farm property from Winthrop. The parcel is just one-third of an acre, but the Select Board is weighing the strategic value of controlling at least a piece of Harbor Place as its future comes into focus.

Select Board member Dawn Hill Holdgate called the area the “Gateway to Nantucket,” noting that the Hy-Line Cruises ferries have become the island’s primary mode of transportation on a year-round basis. The entire access to the area, including the parking lot between Straight Wharf and the Stop & Shop that is owned by New England Development, needs to be reworked, she told the Current last year, adding, “You have a much better seat at the table when you become a property owner. If we let this opportunity pass and told people five years from now that we could have bought that property, people would come back at us and say, ‘Are you crazy?’ We would get run out of town. It’s one of the most key locations on the island for us to be involved in and reworking.”

Those discussions between the town, Winthrop and perhaps other unknown parties have happened behind closed doors in executive session due to the sensitive nature of the topic.