As last week’s Clifford Symposium highlighted, affordable housing is one of the most prominent issues facing Vermont today. The town of Middlebury and the college entered into a partnership in 2022 to construct Stonecrop Meadows, an affordable housing development. Construction is expected to commence before the end of the year on a project that may take five to 10 years to be fully completed.
The project involves the construction of 218 units of mixed-use housing, consisting of multi-family homes such as duplexes and townhomes, and will also include a three-story apartment complex. The housing units will be located at 77 Seminary Street Extension in Middlebury.
A particularly important aspect of the Stonecrop Meadows development is garnering support from local communities, according to representatives of Summit Properties. Oftentimes, there is vocal opposition and pushback from community members who do not want to see the composition of their neighborhoods change or property values to depreciate.
As the project developed, Summit hosted community feedback sessions where the people of Middlebury could come and hear about the plans, as well as voice their concerns, hesitations or support.
“Most of the feedback has been extremely positive, even from a large number of the most impacted/closest neighbors,” said Andy Hooper, a town of Middlebury Selectboard member.
However, opinions were not entirely uniform. Some local residents have expressed concerns about the environmental impact and increased stress on the town’s existing infrastructure, particularly the five-corner intersection of Seminary and Washington Street, as well as the Means Woods off the Seminary Street extension, according to Hooper. Last fall, several residents voiced concerns largely about the impact on stormwater at a meeting for the Middlebury Development Review Board, according to the Addison Independent. In response to these concerns, Summit has conducted studies to make sure environmental impact is limited, particularly in the wetlands surrounding the parcel.
Summit COO Zeke Davisson told The Campus he was surprised by the overwhelming support for the project, adding that some people even wished the project would be even larger. He believes that this demonstrates the shared value placed on the need to address Vermont’s housing crisis.
“We found that not only were people not balking at the density we were proposing, they asked why we couldn’t push the envelope further,” Davisson said. “I think that sentiment reflected two things: first, that the housing problem has become so bad that people are finding motivation to support and lift up housing projects in a way that didn’t historically elicit that reaction. Second, that the parcel in question is the Town’s best opportunity for smart-growth development.”
Housing and the rising cost of living in Vermont were recently highlighted in a series of panels, lectures and community events — including a presentation on Summit’s ongoing project — as part of the college’s annual Clifford Symposium.
The college’s involvement with the project, however, goes back several years to when Middlebury initially explored a partnership with Summit Property Management. According to Davisson, in 2022, the college hoped to see if any of their current land holdings could be used to develop affordable workforce housing. At the time, zoning laws and existing infrastructure did not accommodate for large scale affordable development on any existing properties.
Soon after, however, a large plot of land went onto the market in an area conducive to affordable housing. The college bought the 35-acre property for $1.5 million from Marjorie Mooney and selected Summit as the developer for the project, which had an estimated cost at the time of approximately $40 million.
Following the Covid-19 pandemic, the state of Vermont received funds under the American Rescue Plan Act, a portion of which was allocated specifically for housing development. The state of Vermont approved 40% of the total ARPA housing funding for Stonecrop Meadows.
According to the Addison County Economic Development CorporationSummit has received multiple grants that would help fund the project, including a grant of $1 million from Community Development Block. The Vermont Housing and Conservation Board approved $5,670,000 for Summit’s project in a meeting last May to help subsidize the cost of building the first 35-unit apartment building. The rest of the project will be funded through tax credits.
While the initiative is just one incremental step toward relieving the housing crisis, it is a step in a positive direction. Alongside Middlebury, various other towns in Vermont are developing an estimated total of 1341 housing units, according to the state of Vermont’s Agency of Commerce and Community Development.
“[Summit will] begin construction on the infrastructure portions (roads, water/sewer extension, stormwater retention ponds, etc.) before the end of 2024. That would put us in a position to begin constructing and selling homes by the summer of 2025,” Davisson said, adding that they hope to do the same for the apartment complex by 2026.
