Construction and tourism are the twin pillars of the island economy. Take away either one and the island economy is no longer viable. (Perhaps one could argue that the island would still be a last great place without a thriving year-round community, but KeepOurPlace.com will have none of that. Keeping our place means, among other things, continuing to be an island where young couples want to, and can, make their homes and raise their children.)

So the island economy needs the next $100 million of development. But it also needs the next 15 years of visitors. There are at least three kinds. First are the daydrinkers, who treat the island like Misquamicut, heading straight for the bars, with maybe a few laps on a rental motorcycle (chin on the handlebars, thumb on the horn, helmet on the back seat) to break the monotony. Then there are the enclavers, who treat the island like Watch Hill, driving off the boats in their Land Rovers filled with organic brie, and disappearing into their hedge-surrounded properties until it is time to leave.

In the middle are those who treat BI like, well, BI. They come for 3-14 days, stay in the hotels, eat all their meals in the restaurants, buy BIwear in the stores, bike the paved roads, walk the Greenway, and decompress at the beach. Call them the BImmersion visitors. They come precisely because BI is still different from the mainland, and they are the indispensible core of the tourism economy. Lose them and it would take a lot of additional daydrinkers to make up the difference.

So here is a role for the Chamber of Commerce. We spend a lot of advertising money telling people why they *should* come to BI. Have we done enough surveying to know why they actually *do* come to BI? Have we solicited the names from hotels and realtors of people who used to come regularly but have stopped, so we can find out why?

Since we are talking about the economy, we probably need a “bottom line.” So here it is. The island builders need the next $100 million of work, but it can come in either compact, finely-architected million-dollar projects or bloated, cheesy, million-dollar projects. Island builders are extraordinarily skillful, and are up to the task either way.

The island also needs the next 15 years of BImmersion visitors and they likely care a *lot* about what that next $100 million of development looks like. Try immersing yourself in Watch HIll. You can’t. Try immersing yoourself in Misquamicut. You can’t. How much do the BImmersion visitors care?

Why don’t we ask them?

Tomorrow: Theory Two: It’s the Stewardship, Stupid.

When a situation like Champlin’s or Seawinds arises, there is no ambiguity, because there is no pretense that the proposal is in keeping with any island criteria for appropriateness. Everyone knows in advance that it is totally inappropriate.

In a back-handed way, the same clarity attaches to conservation. Perhaps in the beginning, some might have argued that putting land into conservation would not be in keeping with island tradition, but not any more. Can you imagine someone making a cogent argument that conserving open space is inappropriate? On today’s Block Island, conservation is the very essence of keeping.

Individual houses are in the gray area in between. A house design is neither “totally in keeping” nor “totally out of keeping.” However, KeepOurPlace.com sees certain kinds of houses that are not adequately in keeping with the island. This is not to say, of course, that we would all agree as to exactly which ones they are.

What we might agree on are some of the criteria for evaluating the next $100 million of development on Block Island. In the days ahead, we will look at some potential criteria.

Tomorrow: Theory One:”It’s the tourist experience, stupid.”

www.KeepOurPlace.com exists to encourage and facilitate closer study and awareness of the “Other 50%” of Block Island, the half of the island that is not in conservancy.

The reason to do so is that the Other 50% is changing quite rapidly, and not always in ways that are in keeping with what we might like. Some of the proposed changes are flagrant. Indeed, when faced with possibilities like Champlin’s marina or Seawinds, the island itself cries out in pain and the community arises as one to protect it. Meanwhile, year in and year out, a dozen or so new houses go up. The majority, KeepOurPlace.com believes, bring a smile to the face of the island. They are vigorous designs, but wholly in keeping. Their owners have every right to be proud of them.

As the island fills up, however, doing it right gets more challenging. The next $100 million of development will be decisive. Done right, and we are blessed with our established island architects who know how to do it right, the island will continue to deserve its place as one of the last twelve great ones. Done willy-nilly, it risks joining so many mainland communities that are now asking themselves, “How did we let this happen to our community?”

Tomorrow: Wholly in Keeping. Says Who?

When it comes to the built environment on the island, I guess I started out as a sleeper — mostly unaware of how much the island has changed from the 1980s version that came to be selected as one of the twelve last great places of the western hemisphere. Maybe the designation itself lulled me to sleep: “Hey, we made it! And now the big guns of the Nature Conservancy are here to make sure it stays that way.” Indeed, the Nature Conservancy has been, and continues to be, a mighty force for conservation. But they cannot do it alone.

The other source of slumber for me was locality. I used to scoff at the stories of how families in different sections of the island spoke with different accents. It is such a small island. And yet we are not Corn Neck people, nor West Side people, nor Green Hill people, nor Calico Hill people. We are Bluffs people. The four different houses we rented in the 80s and 90s were all within sight of the lighthouse, as is the house we are now blessed to have. So I was only cognizant of a small corner of the island.

It was a series of meetings sponsored by Scenic Block Island in 2003 that awakened me to the fact that development could knock us off our last great perch. Because I was curious, I got a list of the hundred biggest houses on the island from the town GIS office and went out and took pictures of them. Many of them are grossly disrespectful, but I assumed there was nothing I could do about it. I had become a weeper. The more information I gethered about the “Other 50%” (my collection of house pictures grew to almost 1500 courtesy of the island appraisers) the more discouraged I got. “It’s horrible, but there’s not a thing we can do.”

The trouble with that attitude, of course, is that it is self-fulfilling. Those that believe there is nothing they can do always turn out to be right. But stewardship demands that we try, even if only in a small way. So I will use this web site to make available the information about the island’s built environment and the tools that are available to understand and potentially influence it. I take heart from those who have written to the Block Island Times of late, stressing the importance of individual action: “Stop being sleepers and weepers. Be an active keeper, if only in a small way.”

A small but significant way that you can take action in regards to the island’s built environment is to make this the winter that you get to know more about it. KeepOurPlace.com is committed to making tools and information available. I am on-island this week working with Martha Roldan (the indispensible Martha Roldan) to update my material. The Autumn 2006 editions will be available by the end of the month. I hope you will dig in and get more conversent with the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Tomorrow: In Summary

KeepOurPlace.com has just three (3) founding convictions:

1. Like it or not, we are the stewards of one of the twelve last great places of the western hemisphere. And our obligations as stewards extend equally to both 50%’s of the island: the 50% that is in conservancy and the “Other 50%” that is in private hands. All of Block Island is sacred ground.

2. The island economy depends on its continuing to look and feel different from the mainland. If the houses of Block Island start to look like the garish things we see on the mainland, fewer people will want to visit.

3. The best hope for the next $100 million of development on Block Island is to have it be in the hands of our established island architects and builders, but that alone is not enough. They must know that they have a knowledgable and vigilant community behind them.

And that is really all we are starting with. KeepOurPlace.com is not trying to prevent the next $100 million of development on Block Island or even to stretch it out. We are focused on excellence of development. Is it respectful of a last great place? Is it respectful of island architectural traditions? Is it respectful of the scale of a small island?

At the Your Town conference sponsored by Scenic Block Island and Mary Newhouse a year ago June, one of the speakers made the point that a community gets the quality of development it demands. Those that settle for mediocrity get it; those that insist upon excellence get excellence instead.

Tomorrow: Sleepers, Weepers, or Keepers?

Okay, we need to work on this part…

To see the comments entered by others, look just below the balloon that says “LEAVE A COMMENT”. There you will see the words “CLICK HERE.” Pretend they say “CLICK HERE TO VIEW COMMENTS” and click on them. The comments made by others should then appear.

Let’s assume for the moment that you already do email. You have learned to deal with the various annoyances that go with it. Web sites have their own quirks.

The first and most annoying is that they assume a privileged voice that others respond to. So I create (or “post” as the web mavens would say) the words you are now reading and they come up on the site for all to read. Visitors to the site, such as yourself, then respond, if they wish, to what I have written. For the first few weeks that may be fine as we all adjust to this new way of conversing, but over time it may stunt what wants to be a true conversation. Hopefully, it won’t.

A second quirk is that the material I put on the site is presented in reverse chronological order; most recent first. This is the third posting, but if you are coming to the site for the first time today (and if so, welcome) you will see this part first, then the ones that actually precede it. And woe be to me if I leave something out and try to tack it on the end later in the day. It will go in the beginning.

Probably the biggest headache is “identities.” In order for the site to work, each participant in the conversation needs to tell the site, up front, who they are and needs to establish a password. I wish we did not need to do all this, but there is a whole world of spam and worse out there that likes to cripple web sites just for fun. As we get into this, we may want to adjust our administrative procedures.

Finally, recognize that we are all learning this new web converation business together. I have never done this before, either. I will make mistakes and do dumb things. If you are looking for reasons to decide that this whole KeepOurPlace.com thing is unworkable, you will surely find some in the early going.

Fortunately, we are back up by a very extraordinary team of web developers, blend interactive, who have worked hard this summer to make this site as usable as possible. If there are things that can be better, I will work with them to make them better.

Tomorrow: Whither KeepOurPlace.com Part I

A web site may not be the most convenient medium for discussing the “Other 50%” and it certainly is not the cheapest, but it was chosen for three reasons:

1. A web site makes it easy to combine color photos with commentary.

There is no way to capture the built environment of Block Island in words alone. Or in pictures alone. We need both and the pictures are best when they are in color. Web sites do all this amazingly well. Meanwhile, most of us have adopted the new digital cameras, so we are equipped to make exactly the kinds of photos that are used on web sites.

2. A web site bridges the gap to the “Other Other 50%”

When we talk about the “Other 50%” on KeepOurPlace.com, we will mean the half of the physical island that is not in conservancy. But there is another “Other 50%”: the (roughly) half of island property owners who do not live on the island full time. Year-rounders will read something on this web site and say, “Oh, I heard about that at BIGS an hour ago.” Cottagers (and that includes the sponsor of this site) weren’t at BIGS an hour ago, or maybe even a week ago.

A full discussion of the “Other 50%” needs and can benefit tremendously from, active participation from the “Other Other 50%”. In particular, some who live on the mainland have professional skills and experience that can be invaluable in this conversation. (The map shows lots whose tax bill went somewhere other than 02807 in 2005.)

And we really should be saying the “Other 99%”, because property owners are only a tiny fraction of all those who truly love Block Island, who come every summer, and who are willing to do their part to keep it.

3. A web site can aggregate.

Imagine that, as KeepOurPlace.com develops, there are a thousand readers who agree with what it is saying. That by itself counts for zero because those thousand people remain invisible. Now imagine, perhaps more realistically, a hundred people joining the conversation, and expressing both their agreements and their disagreements. Now each knows they are far from alone. And, more importantly, the site itself builds on the good ideas of a hundred, not just one.

No method, however, is perfect. In order to make KeepOurPlace.com work, we will all have to be passionate enough about our island to get past the inevitable teething problems.

Tomorrow: Web Site Quirks and Annoyances