Lauren Geiger has an ever-present reminder of why she is working toward building new housing in Plainfield, a town of 1,200 people just east of Montpelier. As she looks out of her window, she can see several neighbors who were hit by flooding in recent years.
“I’m living next to a house that is condemned,” she said. “I’m looking across the brook at a house that is empty, where the two residents and their daughter had to leave, I’m looking out near the Brook Road, where there are a number of houses that are empty.”
Geiger and her family decided to evacuate as the waters rose quickly around her home in July of last year, although they were ultimately spared damage beyond their basement level. She feels lucky compared to some of Plainfield’s hardest-hit residents, like the tenants of the “Heartbreak Hotel” building, which was partially swept away by flood waters last year.
Geiger is working with the owner of the Heartbreak Hotel and a coalition of other Plainfield volunteers who have one idea for how to rebuild: Developing a parcel of open land into lots that could become future housing for Plainfield flood victims and other locals with housing needs.
The project, called the Plainfield village expansion, faces a critical juncture up ahead. On Town Meeting Day, residents will decide from the floor whether to establish a reserve fund that could become the funding mechanism for the project.
The 23-acre open space plot, owned by Plainfield Town Clerk Bram Towbin and his wife, Erica, sits well above the floodplain along upper Main Street and East Hill Road. In the village expansion plan proposed by a volunteer steering committee, the town of Plainfield would buy the land, develop it into about 30 to 40 lots, and sell them for future housing construction.
Proponents of the plan say that the new housing could both offset lost housing stock and draw in new residents to a town that has experienced decades-long population decline.
“I love the idea of attracting perhaps some younger families and maybe some senior citizens to an area that is not only beautiful, but walkable to the existing village,” Geiger said.
But the plan has faced opposition too. Residents have pushed back against the expansion with concerns and complaints in town meetings and on social media. Among their key objections were that the project was going too fast, that Towbin’s involvement posed ethical concerns and that the development could change the neighborhood’s character or overwhelm the village with traffic congestion.
The Plainfield Select Board appears to have conceded on the first point. Initially, the Town Meeting Day proposal was to fully fund the project with a $2.5 million bond. But the Select Board decided to step back that proposal, instead moving forward with the creation of a reserve fund that could allow the town to do more if certain conditions are met over the next few months.
Arion Thiboumery, the Heartbreak Hotel owner who is coordinating the project, said via email that those conditions would be: the State Ethics Commission provides guidance on navigating the sale with Towbin; a purchase option is secured; and that a full budget and layout for the development is made public. The Select Board could then consider the purchase.
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The Vermont Community Foundation has expressed interest in providing Plainfield with a 2% interest loan for the purchase, Geiger said. In the long term, the steering committee believes the project would pay for itself with the lot sales and additional property taxes coming into the town’s coffers.
She said the local financing offer was part of the reason for the project’s speed, since the future of the national economy and construction industry was so uncertain.
“We have to be realistic about the federal picture right now, and we have a lot of interest in this project from the state and from other grant funding opportunities and that kind of thing,” she said. “And I think that if we have to wait another year for this project to happen, I’m not sure that some of those opportunities will still exist.”
The proponents also want the project to be finished in time for federal buyout recipients to use their money to purchase lots. They and other flood victims would be given priority for the sales, Geiger said.
Geiger also defended the project’s scope and size, noting that the committee has already changed the design based on feedback from local surveys and planning meetings. The committee is conducting a survey through March 2 to gather resident’s thoughts on how and whether the project should include tiny homes and a community gathering space.
The town’s divide over the project shines through in the anonymous responses to the survey so far. Out of 68 respondents, about 20 praised the idea of the village expansion as a whole, while 13 voiced clear opposition to the project no matter its design, many saying that the many new homes would negatively impact the area’s character and quality of life.
Geiger remains “cautiously optimistic” about the vote next Tuesday.
“We have definitely gotten some negative feedback, but we’ve also gotten a tremendous amount of positive feedback. So we’ll see what happens. It’ll be a very interesting town meeting,” she said.
Flooding was not the only hit to Plainfield’s economy and character in 2024. Goddard College, a liberal arts college with a reputation for experimental education methods, announced that it would close its doors for good in April. The college pursued several buyers for its Plainfield campus before closing a deal with Execusuite, a New Hampshire-based real estate firm, in October.
The town also recently experienced a major shift in its flagship co-op, which recently moved out of the historic grange hall at 153 Main St. and into the former location of the Plainfield Hardware store along Route 2.
The town is seeking proposals for the future use of the grange space. One group led by two local farmers, the Plainfield Granary, is seeking to raise funds to buy the building and keep it as a community center.
Geiger noted that Plainfield’s population has dropped by over 100 people since its peak in 1970, when it had nearly 1,400 people, according to 2020 Census data. She envisions a town where she can see people on the street, walking around and saying hello to one another.
“I just think about an extension of the town, of the current village, that I could walk to, and there’d be a little green space there, and maybe eventually a playground and gardens and orchard, or these things that are envisioned in the plan. And to me, that just seems like such a sweet possibility for us locally,” she said.
Read the story on VTDigger here: On Town Meeting Day and beyond, Plainfield residents chart a new future.