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.