Word: nantucket
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...crisp blue, and a bright sun spilled down on the familiar figure cutting through the ocean on water skis. Just as she has done every day during her six-week stay at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport this summer, Jackie Kennedy celebrated her 39th birthday skimming over Nantucket Sound. Then she collected an assortment of Kennedy children and treated them to an alfresco picnic on Egg Island, a sand bar that was a J.F.K. favorite during his summer White House days. Came evening, and she was at Father-in-Law Joe Kennedy's house for a quiet family dinner...
Walter Beinecke Jr., 50, heir to a sizable chunk of his family's Sperry & Hutchison Green Stamp fortune and a successful real estate developer and cattle rancher in his own right, thinks he has a solution for old Nantucket's people problems. Beinecke's idea is to "trade up" the island by finding fewer people who will spend more money. "Instead of selling six postcards and two hot dogs," he says, "you have to sell a hotel room and a couple of sports coats...
Fewer Passengers. To trade up, "Bud" Beinecke has been buying up. To attract yachtsmen, he and a Nantucket partner have bought out most of the deteriorated wharf front and constructed a large shopping center and marina complex that has tripled the number of yacht berths. To keep some of the penny-ante trippers away, he has refused to renew the lease on his docks for one of the excursion steamers out of Hyannis and demanded that the other carry fewer passengers at higher rates. To upgrade the mainstreet shopping area, he has bought up 80% of the commercial acreage...
Beinecke, who spent his first summer on Nantucket at the age of two, expects his commercial interests to turn a profit eventually-but money is not his main motive. He plans to turn his commercial holdings over to a foundation that will spend at least half the income restoring and maintaining historic buildings. Along with other off-islanders, he has also bought up undeveloped land for conservation. Basically, he explains, he is trying to preserve the island as it used...
Still, most islanders admit that Beinecke's development, even if executed somewhat imperiously, is far superior to anything a quick-buck developer would put up. Says Philip Read, who runs Beinecke's Jared Coffin House and has been around long enough to be considered an "islander": "If Nantucket becomes a little sophisticated, a little high-priced, then I think it's all right. If it becomes a Coney Island, I think it's dead...