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Board will Present Proposal to Move Shaftsbury Town Offices, Repurpose Cole Hall

Posted: December 12, 2024

SHAFTSBURY – The Community Center Development Committee (CCDC) will recommend to the Select Board at a special meeting on Monday to move the town offices from Cole Hall to a former medical building at 677 Route 7A.

In addition to purchasing the vacant building, the proposal would repurpose historic Cole Hall, built as a Universalist Church in 1834, into a community center. The meeting will be held at 6 p.m. at Cole Hall on December 9.

Town officials have been taking action and seeking options since the town's American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Committee in the summer of 2023 asked Shaftsbury residents for ideas and suggestions about how to spend the federal money allotted to the town. The survey results indicated a strong desire for community space and places to gather. Since then, the Select Board has acquired land near Cole Hall for a town green and formed the CCDC, which has considered several options.

Improvements to historic Cole Hall have been part of the focus of the CCDC, but this has been complicated because of an ongoing problem with rainwater leaking into the structure. The Select Board continues to explore solutions to the problem.

The former medical building is located in South Shaftsbury. Dr. David E. King reluctantly closed the Shaftsbury Medical Associates office In June 2022 after lengthy efforts to recruit a new physician to take over the practice proved unsuccessful.

An active dental practice is also located on the property.

Members of the CCDC discussed the matter at their Nov. 25 meeting. They expressed the feeling that the roughly 4,100-square-foot facility would not need a great deal of work to be fit to host the town offices. It includes an ample meeting space. At an initial asking price of $87 per square foot, the purchase cost would be much less than what members had found in exploring building a smaller new community center near Cole Hall.

If the Select Board accepts the recommendation, they will enter into negotiations for purchase. In addition to town offices, the committee envisions social services provider utilizing the building space.

"It's the most responsible choice fiscally. It's the most expedient choice. It does all this other stuff," said CCDC Co-Chair Zoe Contros Kearl, a representative of the Planning Commission.

Ben Benedict, an architect and recent addition to the committee, has been evaluating the building and presented his findings and site plan recommendations at the meeting.

"The other thing that as I kept looking at it was, it's a very nice site," he said. "It's open and bright. With a decent sign at the end, it would be a fine place for people to come."

Said Select Board Chair Naomi Miller, a non-voting member of the committee, "That outside space could be so nice, both of them - two separate outdoor spaces."

Members also praised the accessibility aspect of the new building, especially compared to Cole Hall.

At the meeting, Contros Kearl went over aspects of her presentation of the recommendations.

"The other part of this plan is the restoration of Shaftsbury's most beloved building, Cole Hall. Since its construction, Cole Hall served as the heart of Shaftsbury," she said.

The plan would return the building to one its former uses, as a community center. In fact, it once was the site of winter famers markets, one member said.

"This would usher in an era of reuse, of square dances beneath the vault and ceiling," said Contros Kearl.

The original charge to the CCDC - formed to succeed other committees looking at parts of the whole matter - was to offer concrete recommendations to the Select Board by January 2025. About $558,000 of local funding for these projects is available, to be expended pending voter approval.

These funds originated from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). Because of a change in federal rules, the town faced a deadline to spend these funds on shovel-ready projects by the end of this year.

However, to get around this, and have more time to plan and apply for matching grants, the Select Board instead applied $558,149 retroactively to COVID-era payroll, creating a fund balance of that amount in the general fund.

Compliments of: The Bennington Banner
Posted/Author: Mark Rondeau

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