Last summer, I facilitated three focus groups about the future of Maurice’s Campground in Wellfleet. Our consultants organized them to allow the Maurice’s Campground Planning Committee to hear directly from a broad cross-section of the community about their hopes and concerns regarding the future use of the 21-acre property.
The top-line message that emerged from these sessions was that people in Wellfleet have intense feelings about their community and what makes it special — feelings that defy easy description.
In one of the focus groups, a seasonal resident described Wellfleet as her “spiritual” home. The others in the group immediately embraced that word: it captured their mystical and deeply emotional attachment to the town.
I didn’t realize the profundity of this insight until I saw the reactions to the emerging master plan for Maurice’s. The controversy that surfaced at the community meeting where the plan was unveiled earlier this month has taken on an even more lurid and divisive tone on Facebook.
Somehow, I have resisted the fixation people have with social media. But I will reluctantly admit to being an occasional voyeur, peering over my wife’s shoulder to read posts on the Wellfleet Community Page. It has been disorienting to read what people have written about the nascent master plan for Maurice’s and the misinformation about who will live there, the rules governing local preference, and the number of three-story buildings being planned, among other details.
I try to remind myself that social media posts are no one’s best version of themselves. It is the algorithm talking. And I appreciate the suspicion that 250 homes will, in some ineffable way, transform our small town, putting at risk the qualities we care most about.
Yes, it sounds like a big number. But it is far from the “mega city” described online.
The town needs more housing for the people who make Wellfleet Wellfleet: the people who deliver the mail, plow the roads, stock the shelves at the Marketplace, and provide care at Outer Cape Health Services. The list is long, and affordable housing is scarce.
The planning committee presented the Studio G Architects team that prepared the master plan with a challenge: “Optimize use of the property to address the town’s housing needs for residents with incomes insufficient to find decent, safe, and affordable housing” in the local market. We insisted, however, that the product be “a well planned, coherent, and desirable residential neighborhood that ‘fits’ into and is identifiable as part of Wellfleet despite its relatively higher residential density.”
In other words: “Help us solve our housing problem. But this place is precious. Don’t screw it up.”
We had other expectations, too, like minimizing the environmental impact and maximizing renewable energy and climate resiliency, because the Outer Cape’s spectacular and fragile natural environment is also inextricably what makes Wellfleet Wellfleet.
We started with a bigger number but settled on 250 homes primarily because our consultants told us that the larger number violated our Keep Wellfleet Wellfleet requirement. But we also listened to the abutters who wanted fewer three-story buildings. The Studio G consulting team delivered what we asked them to produce.
Some abutters are circulating a petition opposing Article 26 on next Monday’s town meeting warrant. If this $125,000 request for consulting services fails, it will, at a minimum, delay the project and add to its cost.
This is a familiar playbook: The real goal of opponents is to scuttle the project or at least reduce its size. With competition for state funding and rapidly escalating construction costs, a delay undermines the project’s feasibility. But so does a further reduction in the number of homes, because it deprives the town of the ability to spread infrastructure and other development costs over more units.
While opponents fear that the master plan will destroy the town’s essential character, I am convinced it will make Wellfleet better. Ignoring the loss of workers and the declining elementary school enrollment is transforming the very thing we cherish most about our town: the vibrancy of the people who make Wellfleet Wellfleet.
Carl Sussman is vice chair of the Maurice’s Campground Planning Committee.
