Letter: Alex & Ani seeks to take advantage of our community

To the editor:

I have lived in Little Compton for over 30 years. I’m quite far from Sakonnet Vineyard, I have never been inconvenienced by their commercial concert or event business. Yet despite the fact that their entertainment venue is nowhere near my backyard, I am adamantly opposed to granting this business an entertainment license.

Why? Because the Alex & Ani affiliated business has come into town to take advantage of our community and usurp the land and environment that we have fought hard to protect. They are selling access to our landscape in violation of the deed restrictions that we purchased using public funds. Little Compton taxpayers paid the previous owners a significant amount of money to protect that land for the common, agricultural good of our town and citizens, not to provide a venue for large-scale commercial events. Those payments of taxpayers’ funds enabled the purchase of that land by Alex & Ani companies, now they want to violate those contracts to the detriment of our neighbors and our town.

Little Compton town officials and citizens vigorously object to being taken advantage of. We call upon our community to repel the businesses who are trying to misuse our residential district for their commercial profit. I am eager to incur the legal cost to prosecute this offensive violation of our town regulations. I call upon my neighbors and elected officials to stand up for Little Compton by telling big business that we are sincerely committed to our agricultural and community values. Let’s enforce regulations that prohibit commercial concerts and festival activity in our residential districts and protect Little Compton farmland.

Edward ([Ned) Levine

Little Compton