Housing

Tiny-house project finally moving forward after legal wrangling

By on • ( 3 Comments )

by the Vermont Standard

Construction is set to begin on Ascutney Lofts, a five-unit tiny-house development in West Windsor, 15 months after the project was approved unanimously by the town’s Development Review Board (DRB) in August of last year. 

Despite the DRB’s okay, however, the project became mired in legal limbo when the district coordinator for the Vermont Natural Resource Board’s District 2 Environmental Commission issued a jurisdictional opinion (JO) in late May that the project fell under the permitting oversight of Act 250, Vermont’s land use and development law. 

West Windsor contractor and builder Mark Morse and his partner, Yulia Moskvina, a nurse anesthetist, appealed the JO written by District 2 Coordinator Stephanie Gile to the Vermont Superior Court, Environmental Division, commonly known as the Vermont Environmental Court, in June.

Four months later, on Sept. 25, Gile’s decision was overridden by Superior Judge Thomas S. Durkin and the case was remanded back to the District 2 Environmental Division for closure. Durkin found that the 2.4-acre parcel lot alongside Mill Brook at the southwestern entry point to Brownsville village ceased being subject to Act 250 oversight in 2014, when an Act 250 permit to allow the construction of a 100-seat restaurant on the site adjacent to the U.S. Post Office in West Windsor was abandoned when the proposed project never commenced construction.

Republished from recent email newsletter of the Vermont Standard, the award-winning weekly newspaper serving Windsor County.

Discover more from Vermont Daily Chronicle

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Categories: Housing

3 replies »

  1. Well now there it is again. We get creeped out about the administrative state intruding into the lives of the citizenry. Next time you get that suspicion, think of these folks trying to use their land. For the commonwealth to jerk folks around like this is the standard not the exception. Perhaps it’s time to ask candidates for office what obstructions to enterprise they’re going to repeal. Doesn’t American liberty mean you run your own life?

  2. It’s an easy solution, we could have easily solved this in 1964.

    No permits required for any house under 1200 sq. ft.

    Septic permits required for homes above 1200 sq ft and below 1500 sq ft.

    Suddenly people could build homes, contractors, banks and insurance companies would make sure the investment was sound.

    Suddenly we have homes, they can drive them into our state with trucks, modular homes, manufactured homes, single wide trailers.

    Throw in a state statute the prohibits the restriction of any style residential construction and we’d have the problem solved in about 3 months.

    Add, any subdivision will be granted for residential use of homes under 1200 sq ft, just think, we could have wonderful neighborhoods like they have in the south end of burlington,,, built of course in the 1950’s, before the nonsense started.