The Cape Cod Land Bank: the use of a land acquisition strategy to preserve a Massachusetts coastal region

Registered voters of Barnstable County, Massachusetts, voted on November 3, 1998 to establish the Cape Cod Open Space Land Acquisition Program for this coastal region of 15 towns. Known locally as the Cape Cod Land Bank, the legislation is intended “to protect public drinking water supplies, acquire open space and conservation land, provide bicycling and walking trails, and enhance opportunities for recreation” on Cape Cod. The idea of a Cape Cod land bank grew from the experience of neighboring Nantucket Island. Despite the existence of numerous planning tools, such as building restrictions, zoning bylaws, subdivision regulations, and historic district designations, rapid development threatened the island. In the early 1980s, other management tools were explored. Nantucket integrated two ideas — a tax on real estate sales and land-banking (buying land while its affordable and saving it for future use) — into the countryʹs first land bank. Revenues collected are used to purchase land, which is preserved as open space rather than developed. The Cape Cod Land Bank includes an excise tax on real estate bills, matched by $15 million in state funds (Gerwin, Saving Cape Cod, Commonwealth, Summer 1999). This case study chronicles the land bank process and implementation issues and challenges readers to assess its potential to preserve Cape Codʹs quality of life.