Twelve years ago while studying the walking districts of Vineyard Haven, I became aware that the A&P (now Stop & Shop) parking lot would become a new town square with shops surrounding and connecting Main street to the ferry and the harbor. The plan for the new Stop & Shop will stop this development. The new store should be designed with retail shops tucked into the facade that faces the parking lot, and there should be a continuous sidewalk access for these new shops and to help connect Main street to the harbor and Water street.

Porto Pizza and Menemsha Blues have done a good job in making pedestrian space on the north side of the square.

We used to have Shirley’s Hardware, then Midnight Farm and a Chinese restaurant with a T-shirt store above. Now it is proposed that we have nothing but a supermarket and a whole bunch of supermarket carts and people and cars all mixed up together.

Can’t we just have the Shop without the Stop?

Jamie Weisman
Vineyard Haven