Kim Stahl Bailey, the creative force behind Nantucket’s newest luxury compound in the coveted Monomoy neighborhood, knows how to get things done. Kim brings to every project a unique blend of big-picture thinking and attention to detail rarely found in one individual.
The compound at 7 Brewster Road is the first project on Nantucket Kim has conceptualized from start to finish, but her experience in the building industry and her ties to Nantucket stretch back decades.
Kim grew up vacationing on Nantucket with her family, which includes her father, Gary, and brother, Chip. Chip and Gary Stahl are well-known names in the island’s design-build industry. Kim recalls the family’s favorite place to stay on Hinckley Lane: an old-time Nantucket cottage called The Sandcastle that the Stahls rented every summer for five years. Kim’s first memories of Nantucket can be traced back to the vintage cottage, with its open-stud whitewashed walls and brightly painted floorboards worn smooth by more than one hundred years of sandy footprints. These quintessential island sun-soaked summers cemented Nantucket as a place that was deeply meaningful to the Stahl family.
Later, Kim returned to the island while in college studying aviation and worked summers at the Harbor House as a waitress. Perhaps it is her experience as a pilot that helps her see the long view in any project. Kim studied at Purdue University, which counts aviation pioneers Amelia Earhart and Neil Armstrong among its alums. After working as a pilot for a charter aviation service, Kim got into the family business of design and cabinet making.
Much of Kim’s experience in homebuilding and design has been in Rochester, New York, where she lives when she is not on Nantucket. Kim and her brother Chip took the reins of their father Gary’s millwork shop in Rochester and began selling custom cabinetry to designers and shops, including The Water Closet on Nantucket. Chip came out to the island full time about twenty-five years ago. While Rochester remained her home base, Kim traveled to the island to work for Chip and his late wife, Karli, in their design-build business. Kim designed custom kitchens for Chip’s discerning clients.
“I love cabinet making,” Kim says. “I love creating. I love taking plans and making them come to life.”
Kim’s experience learning from her father Gary in his cabinet shop was very hands-on. There, she discovered a love for natural materials and an appreciation for how much creativity goes into every aspect of working with your hands. Having spent years in a millwork shop, Kim has great respect for all of the details that go into fine homebuilding, and all that comes through in her work on the 7 Brewster Road compound.
After designing her own dream home in Rochester, Kim was ready to make the leap on Nantucket and tackle a project herself from stem to stern. This one is still a family affair, as Kim worked with her father Gary to design the exterior architecture. Gary had built another home nearby in Monomoy, and Kim was excited to leave her mark on the neighborhood, too.
“Monomoy really suits the style of home that I am drawn to,” Kim says. “I love traditional architecture, symmetry, and my father Gary has built many Gambrel-style homes.”
The Brewster Road compound will feature nearly 8,000 square feet of living space and includes a six-bedroom main house and a separate three-bedroom guest house with an attached two-car garage. The main home is designed for grand entertaining as well as comfortable everyday living. Beautifully sited on the lot and set back from the road, the compound also includes resort-style amenities like a pool and spa, pool house, outdoor kitchen and lounge, and beautifully landscaped grounds.
Indeed, Monomoy is an area known for grand homes and gracious architecture. Originally home to the island’s sheep commons, the old Cathcart Farm property became known as Monomoy Heights and was subdivided in the 1890s. Monomoy remained a mostly rural area throughout the 1920s until cottagers built summer houses that ranged from the spartan to the palatial.
Today, Monomoy is a very desirable neighborhood with commanding views of Nantucket Harbor, well oriented for front-row seats to spectacular sunsets. Brewster Road is one of Monomoy’s many unpaved country roads that feels a little like stepping back to old Nantucket. Nearby Cathcart Beach is a favorite with islanders.
Kim is inspired by Nantucket’s architectural history and the high standards designers are held to by the island’s various review boards. She finds working on Nantucket different than working in other communities, and most of that can be credited to the quality of the people she encounters in the building industry.
“The crew on Nantucket is a nicer crew,” Kim says. “The building community is very nice to each other on the island, supportive and helpful. Other places don’t have this kind of good camaraderie.”
Kim is on the jobsite every day, motivating the team to meet deadlines and deliver a beautiful dream home. She works to envision the process from end-to-end and ensure she is seeing problems before the builders and subcontractors run into them, so that she can course correct.
Kim has assembled a world-class crew for this project. Tom Nicosia and his daughter Natalie Nicosia are another father/daughter team Kim recruited to help with the Brewster Road compound. Natalie had experience remodeling and converting a bus into a tiny home on wheels, and Kim was excited to mentor another creative woman.
“Hands-on work is a big part of design work,” Kim says. “Whether that is doing framing or doing interior trim, you learn by doing. There are things you learn on a jobsite that are so amazing for women to learn. I would love to show more young women that it is rewarding, creative, and artistic to get involved in building. It really is no different than art. There are so many women who are passionate about art and are creative who should consider a career in the trades.”
Nantucket has had a long history of giving women opportunities they wouldn’t have had on the mainland. But these days, there aren’t too many women working in the building industry on the scale that Kim is.
Seeing Kim in action on the jobsite, it is clear that she values every member of her crew. Her experience in most parts of home building, from landscaping to framing to painting to fine finish cabinetry, means she knows how much work the team is putting in. What’s more, Kim takes the time to tell her crew and subcontractors how much she values their work. Projects move better when people get along, and Kim is thoughtful about putting together a team of people who not only produce exceptional work, but work well together.
While the compound at Brewster Road is far more luxurious than the beloved summer cottage Kim remembers from childhood, there are elevated echoes of that classic island style throughout Kim’s design. Kim’s newly constructed compound will allow for the best of island living in beautiful, natural surroundings.
Kim is thrilled to be at this point in her career, and to be working alongside family members. Her son Will is attending college to become an architect. She hopes after his graduation, he will join her team as well and the Stahl family building tradition will continue on Nantucket for generations to come.
