There once was a shack in Nantucket

I've been to Nantucket twice. Both day hops. One jaunt was in 1967, on a post-high-school graduation trip to the Cape. The other during the early 1970's on a day off from waitressing. 

So it's been a while.

Still, I remember Nantucket as ultra charming. Quaint streets. Rose-covered shingled cottages. Cobble-stone streets. Unique little shops. 

I always meant to get back for a weekend or something, but never got around to it. 

And then, as it happened, ultra charming - which was never cheap - became ultra expensive, and Nantucket became the place where the ultra wealthy own property. (I've even read that it's displaced the Hamptons as the it place for billionaires to buy their East Coast trophy house.)

So who owns property there? John Henry, owner of the Red Sox and The Boston Globe. Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman. Charles Schwab of the eponymous money company. And Charles Johnson, the owner of the San Francisco Giants.

Schwab and Johnson both own properties on Nantucket's Old North Wharf. Johnson - who I'm guessing may have a bigger "real" house elsewhere on the island - has a pretty modest house there on the wharf: 1,200 square feet (about the size of my condo). But, unlike my condo, Johnson's "fishing cottage" is valued at $6.5 million. (Schwab's house is larger - not sure by how much - but he paid $10 million for it in 2021.)

That's Johnson's, the two-story porched house next to the new build.

And it's the new build that's gotten Johnson's goat.

Just 18 inches - yikes! - from Johnson's place, that new build isn't a getaway for a fellow big mahoff billionaire. It's going to be a clam shack.

Johnson, 90, a former mutual fund executive and the principal owner of the San Francisco Giants, filed a lawsuit on May 12 in Nantucket Superior Court seeking to invalidate licenses the Straight Wharf Fish Market has received from local and state authorities.

Johnson and a cohort of his neighbors on the historic Old North Wharf have spoken out against the 62-seat restaurant publicly since March, saying it will be too noisy and cause too much congestion, but local boards have backed the plan. (Source: Boston Globe)

Congestion, you say? Congestion? Isn't a small wharf that holds 25 former fishing shacks all tarted up to be worth millions of buckaroos already pretty congested? As is, I understand, pretty much all of Downtown Nantucket is pretty darned congested in the high season, what with all those Nantucket Red wearing rich folks, both billionaire and wannabe, swanning around? 

Noise, you say? Yes, congested areas tend to be noisy. As can restaurants. But my understanding is that this joint, while it does/will have a liquor license, isn't going to be running as a bar/nightclub. Just a restaurant with a menu heavy on lobster and clam rolls. 

But Johnson wants that liquor license rescinded, and he wants to put the kibosh on the whole operation. 

While Johnson has sued to halt the project, his neighbor, billionaire businessman Charles Schwab, has come out in favor of the restaurant, support that came as a pleasant surprise to Frasca and Burleson.

In March, [Johnson's lawyer Danielle] deBenedictis had told the Select Board that in addition to Johnson, she also represented Schwab, 85, and several other wharf residents. But last month, Schwab said in a statement through his attorney that he never opposed the seafood restaurant and was never represented by deBenedictis.

To underscore the point, Schwab's attorney, Steven Cohen wrote:

“We all look forward to enjoying a fresh clam roll and cold soft-serve twist cone on the harbor,” he wrote.

Not that I'll be heading to Nantucket anytime soon, but to me it isn't summer until I have a clam roll. But I'll probably be heading down to Sullivan's on Castle Island in South Boston for mine. Perhaps not as charming and quaint as Nantucket, but cheaper and quicker to get to. 

Still, I'm hoping that the Nantucket clam shack is able to open soon, and that this Johnson NIMBY suit doesn't screw up their entire season.

Pretty funny to see the two old Old North Wharf billionaires throw down on different sides of this one. Maybe Schwab's home is downwind from the smell of fried clams, as opposed to Johnson's, which is butt up against it.

And pretty funny that some rich folks would ultra-wealth-ify a spot that had once been full of the shacks of actual working fishermen, and then turn around and want to clamp down on an actual clam shack opening in their midst.