Statewide planners group tours downtown Springfield

They came, they poked around, and they liked what they saw.

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Published May 16, 2016 in the Rutland Herald Statewide planners group tours downtown Springfield By SUSAN SMALLHEER SPRINGFIELD — They came, they poked around, and they liked what they saw. A group of about 50 members of the Vermont Planners Association held its annual conference Friday at the Hartness House Inn, and then went on a tour of some of the recent developments in the downtown area, as well as a potential new project. The group, which included planners from as far away as Chittenden County and the Montpelier area, visited One Hundred River Street and the Ellis Block, which houses Springfield Cinema 3, both major renovation projects completed within the past five to 10 years. Bob Flint, executive director of Springfield Regional Development Corp., gave the planners a brief history of the challenges of redeveloping the former Fellows Gear Shaper plant. They were slated to also visit the Woolson Block, which Housing Vermont and the Springfield Housing Authority hope to purchase later this year and renovate it for a combined retail-housing project. They were escorted by Carol Lighthall, executive director of Springfield On The Move, the downtown development group. “We’re really pleased to have the group coming to town,” Lighthall said. Kate McCarthy, director of the sustainable communities program for the Vermont Natural Resources Council, said it was good to see what some of the state’s more rural communities were doing. “We wanted to see some rural areas’ success stories,” she said. “Springfield,” she said, “has shown a lot of spunk.” McCarthy was previously a planner with the Windham Regional Commission in Brattleboro. “Not all growth is created equal,” said McCarthy. “People are really interested in Springfield,” she said. Alex Weinhagen, planner for the town of Hinesburg, population 4,000, said that planners can be too oriented toward the northern part of the state, and it was a deliberate choice to head to a southern Vermont town. Weinhagen said Hinesburg faced a similar challenge to Springfield, when a 90,000-square-foot cheese plant in the center of the village abruptly went out of business, putting 100 people out of work. “It was a big hit to the community,” he said. “And it took the community to decide what it wanted.” The 15-acre site eventually was home to “a different kind of restaurant,” the Hinesburg Public House, that is a community gathering place. Fifteen years earlier, everyone wanted a pharmacy in town, so they wouldn’t have to leave town to get their prescriptions filled, he said. There’s now a Kinney Drug in the town. McCarthy said that it was very important for Vermont towns to “build social capital.” The earlier workshops focused on the challenges facing rural areas. “I think Vermont’s downtowns are quite healthy,” she said. There’s a lot of interest in living in them, she said. Two downtowns in particular, Barre City and St. Albans, have undertaken big projects, with their streetscapes improved. “It looks like something real happened there,” said Weinhagen. http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20160516/NEWS02/160519633