By Mike Donoghue

A version of this story appeared this week in the Vermont Standard, the award-winning weekly newspaper published in Woodstock.

A public meeting planned for Wednesday to discuss plans by the Woodstock Resort Corp. to demolish two historic homes on South Street by the Woodstock Inn was postponed after the Village failed to comply with the Vermont Open Meeting Law. 

The Village Development Review Board for Woodstock, like all other Vermont municipalities, is required to circulate agendas ahead of its meeting and is mandated to post notices on its municipal website, according to Vermont’s Open Meeting Law. 

The Vermont Standard, in seeking the legal agenda and the meeting notice, alerted municipal manager Eric Duffy mid-day on Tuesday about the apparent Open Meeting Violation. He promised to investigate immediately, and within a half hour, he said he had confirmed the mistake.

“We canceled and it will be rescheduled as soon as possible,” Duffy told the Standard. As of Wednesday morning, the meeting had been rescheduled for 4 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 27.

He attributed the violation to Woodstock’s new municipal website. Under the old system, he said, agendas would be linked with the calendar. He said the website is still being tinkered with. 

The Woodstock Corp. says it wants to demolish the two homes at 14 and 16 South Street to make green space. However, when asked during a meeting in September if the Woodstock resort would be willing to sign an agreement to preserve it permanently as open space, a resort representative said no.

The two homes are listed on the National Historic District for Woodstock. 

William Bradley is among the Woodstock residents who said this week they are concerned about the lack of public notice that the two homes were planned for demolition.

“Nobody knows about the demolition of these homes in the Historic District,” Bradley told the Vermont Standard. 

Instead of posting the public notice in the hometown Vermont Standard, Duffy said the Village opted to use the Valley News, an out-of-state newspaper, for the official notice to Woodstock residents. Duffy said the Valley News is a backup to using the Standard for required public notices. As a daily, it can have a better deadline flexibility, he said. 

Dan Cotter, publisher of the Vermont Standard, said he was puzzled by this. The Standard has been designated every year as the newspaper of record so Woodstock residents know where to read official notices from the municipality, he said. 

“For nearly 175 years, the Vermont Standard has provided Woodstock and many neighboring Windsor County communities with the ability to keep residents informed about issues like this, and to meet the legal posting requirements under Vermont’s laws to ensure public notices are provided to taxpayers,” he said.

“All that time, it has never been a problem for selectboards, school boards, zoning, planning, or whatever board to submit notices before the deadline at the Standard,” Cotter said. 

The Vermont Standard asked Duffy for copies of the Public Notice for the DRB meeting to consider the petition to demolish the homes and also for the notice canceling the meeting. Neither had been received by Wednesday morning. 

A petition for residents opposed to granting the Inn’s demolition permit had been left at the Norman Williams Public Library in recent days, but by Tuesday it had been removed for unknown reasons. 

A check at the library on Tuesday evening spotted citizen petitions for three other topics. The clipboards were seeking to get three financial items placed on the ballot on Town Meeting Day in March. 

It was unknown if the NWPL library staff returned the anti-demolition petition to the organizers.

Bradley said residents should be concerned about the threat to architectural context and visual integrity to the unique village heritage. 

Attempts to learn more about the demolition application were unsuccessful. The Woodstock planning and zoning office was closed Tuesday due to a site visit, Duffy said. 

The voicemail message for the office urged people to leave a message and noted that, due to staff shortage, at least 48 hours should be allowed for a response from planning and zoning. Duffy said that was an old message from six months ago, and it needs to be changed.

Former Village Trustee Robert Pear said on the local listserv, “There seems to be many people in the community concerned about the possible destruction of the two homes…” especially when they are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

The discussion about the possible demolition of the two historic homes on South Street by the Woodstock Inn came up at a DRB meeting on September 24, according to meeting minutes. 

At that meeting, Ben Pauly, on behalf of the Woodstock Inn, provided the board and audience some history of the properties and the resort’s reasoning for demolition. The resort bought 14 South Street in 1968 and it was formerly the innkeeper’s house. The house at 16 South Street on the corner of Cross Street is from 1840 and had been used for housing and storage. Both properties had been mothballed since approximately 2004 after heating system failures. 

He believes the structures have significant deficiencies, including foundation issues and failing roofs. 

Pauly said the resort had explored various options for the buildings over the years, including in 2008, plans to incorporate them into a spa (determined to be too expensive due to requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act and structural limitations). He also noted there were plans in 2018 to renovate them as guest accommodations (estimated costs were $2.3 million for one house and over $3 million for the other), the minutes said. 

Pauly explained the properties are part of the Woodstock Village Historic District listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

At the meeting, several DRB members and public attendees expressed concerns. Board members questioned the high renovation costs and whether other options, like selling the properties, had been considered. Pauly confirmed that they had. 

Vice chair Randy Mayhew raised concerns about the loss of potential housing units in Woodstock. 

Phil Neuberg, Design Advisory Committee and Historic Preservation Commission chair, indicated that he would like the local Historic Preservation Commission to review the application. 

Village zoning administrator Emily Collins noted it was not a required step in the applicant’s permitting process. 

Wendy Marrinan, Historic Preservation Commission member, questioned whether the resort had properly maintained the buildings in accordance with commitments made under Act 250, Vermont’s land use development law. 

Pear, who was in the audience, expressed doubt at the level of disrepair being described. 

Board member MaryAnne Flynn pointed out that the application indicated a temporary green space but showed intentions for future building on the site. 

The meeting minutes said the Village Design Advisory Committee wrote to the board saying it was against the demolition before reading the resort’s findings submitted to the Division of Historic Preservation. The Committee requested written feedback from the State-level bodies and annual maintenance reports for further review. 

The Village Development Review Board echoed the sentiment, requesting further confirmation that the Division of Historical Preservation was in support. 

Mayhew moved to continue the hearing to the Oct. 8 meeting to give the Woodstock Inn time to provide the supplemental information requested.

The motion was approved 4-0, with member Keri Cole missing. 

However, the application was never included in the subsequent agenda for Oct. 8, and there was no mention in the meeting minutes of any continued discussion of the Woodstock Resort application. 

Now, discussion of the application will have to wait until a meeting can be properly warned.