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September 28, 2023
A new designation in the Hinesburg would give a financial boost to a proposed development offering up to 60 affordable homes, officials say, but skeptics worry about the implications, particularly regarding possible Act 250 exemptions. Alex Weinhagen, Hinesburg’s planning and zoning director, this month asked the selectboard to approve an application for a Neighborhood Development Area designation for the town’s village — 40 square miles of land off Route 116 wedged between the LaPlatte River and Patrick Brook that for years has been queued up for development. Roughly 400 units of residential housing are planned for the area, including developments like Haystack Crossing, Hinesburg Center II, Kelley’s Field and others. “The designation program is something that communities across the state leverage to help their communities install infrastructure and help achieve their goals,” Weinhagen said. “It doesn’t sound prudent for Hinesburg to not pull that lever. It’s something that’s available to us.” The state-offered designation
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Hinesburg hopes new designation will boost affordable housing COREY MCDONALD STAFF WRITER
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provides a variety of benefits for both the town and property owners looking to develop land, including priority in grant funding for things like new sidewalks and bike paths; a reduction in state wastewater permitting fees; financing priority for affordable housing projects; and tax credits for the improvement of building facades or other code improvements, Weinhagen said. While the designation would have a wide range of benefits for stakeholders in the area, the designation was a specific ask of developers of the Windy Ridge project, a new affordable housing project on the land around the NRG systems facility. That project, first announced in March 2022, would bring 75 homes to land just south of the Champlain Union High School in the village. Sixty units will be perpetually affordable to households earning less than 100 percent of area median income. The 46 acres of land was donated by Jan Blomstrann, the founder and former owner of the energy firm NRG Systems and will be developed through a partnership with the Champlain Housing Trust. Officials estimated the project PHOTO BY LEE KROHN
See HINESBURG on page 13
Colorful blossoms draw a late season monarch to a Charlotte garden.
Charlotte’s new administrator plunges into local government LIBERTY DARR STAFF WRITER
Charlotte’s new town administrator is set to take the reins Oct. 2, an undertaking he said he has been preparing for most of his life. Nathaniel Bareham, originally
from New York, has spent more than two years in the Green Mountain State studying environmental law at the Vermont Law and Graduate School where he says his passion for law and local government came together. “I actually came across a
couple of articles that were written by some of the clinics at Vermont Law School pertaining to land use,” he said. “I was doing a little bit of work with the Finger Lakes Land Trust and I hopped online, checked out the school and absolutely loved it. I applied and was
accepted, didn’t look back and moved up to Vermont.” Prior to this time, he was working in the New York state park system as a water safety coordinator, a program he managed for just under three years handling the administrative side of things while
also being the designated point person to mediate any problems. “It was a fairly large and substantial program,” he said. “We had a staff of about 70 that was See BAREHAM on page 13