This story by Corey McDonald first appeared in The Citizen on Feb. 9.
In 1988, when the Lyman Meadows condominium development was built, the population of Hinesburg’s village area almost doubled, by some estimates.
That housing buildout, one of others to come, may have been the starting point for a plan of growth in the town village — 40 square miles of land off Route 116, wedged between the LaPlatte River and Patrick Brook that for decades has been targeted for economic growth in the town.
Now, those plans are quickly beginning to materialize — seemingly all at once. In the next six to 10 years, more than 400 units of residential housing are set either for approval or construction — “maybe more than that,” town planner Alex Weinhagen said.
Late last year, Hinesburg’s largest housing development in its history, Haystack Crossing, was given final approval after more than eight years of work. It will bring 176 housing units to the west side of Route 116 just north of Kinney Drugs.
And this year, final approval is underway for the Hinesburg Center 2 project, adjacent to Haystack Crossing across Patrick Brook — a continuation of the development that brought Kinney Drugs, the Parkside Cafe and housing units to town several years ago. That project, when approved, will bring in 73 new homes.
Across the street, to the west of Route 116, 46 acres of land has been donated to the town earmarked for 100 homes, 60 percent of which will be perpetually affordable. Further to the east, on property off Mechanicsville Road owned by Joe Laster, some 55 housing units are planned.
Then there’s Meadow Mist, 24 condo units in five different buildings under construction near the community school — not to mention the housing that’s already been built: Kelley’s Field, which is also planning a continued expansion of its senior housing units, and the Green Street development, 22 units of affordable housing built by Snyder Homes and sold to the Champlain Housing Trust.
“Hinesburg’s going to look a little different in 5 to 10 years,” Weinhagen said.
As housing — the extreme scarcity of which continues to exacerbate a statewide homeless crisis and a workforce shortage — comes to a head in Vermont, Hinesburg is beginning to see plans that have been etched in town documents for decades come to fruition, bucking trends in neighboring towns like Shelburne, where proposed developments have led to fierce battles at zoning meetings.
“Now that, really, the biggest project ever to come to Hinesburg is now ready to launch … people like myself and others are not surprised, because this was the plan,” said Rep. Phil Pouech, D-Chittenden 4, Hinesburg’s new representative and outgoing selectboard member. “That’s basically been the vision.”
A significant zoning regulation overhaul in the late 2000s, preceded by changes in Hinesburg’s town plans in the early 1990s, has set the town on the path of growth — by some estimates, a 20 percent increase in population.
But “it’s not just kumbaya over here about village growth,” Weinhagen said. “There have been, and still are, a significant chunk of people in this community that are pretty concerned about what all this new development is going to do to the character of the village area.”
“We definitely have a very progressive vision, and we have been planning for growth for a long time,” he said. “But it’s not like everybody in the community is cheerleading for it.”
Mud season forums
In 1989, in response to a very rapid growth rate in the 1980s, the town planning commission initiated a state-funded resident participation project for public input on planning issues facing the town, according to town plan documents.
Those community forums — the “mud season forums” — began a conversation about community change, where residents wanted it to happen and what residents wanted it to look like.
That place was the village — the area of town between the Hinesburg Community School to the south and the Champlain Valley Union High School to the north.
“Forty years ago, the town plan started to evolve — emphasizing that we wanted a strong village center surrounded by rural land,” said Andrea Morgante, a Hinesburg resident of 45 years and a former selectboard member who served for 27 years. “The town plan said that for many years, but it took a much longer time to adopt zoning regulations that would allow that to happen.”
Those zoning regulations changed in the 2000s, when Joe Iadanza was on the planning commission. Another long-time Hinesburg resident, and member of the planning commission for more than 20 years, Iadanza and others worked to change the village’s zoning regulations — some of which still had land zoned for agriculture — to allow for higher density.
“We had a set of circumstances that really pushed us to do what we’re doing,” he said. “The school population falling, the (Saputo cheese factory) leaving … the need from the town and the larger community was that we needed housing. We needed a way for people to come into the community to support our tax base, our water costs — which are rearing their head right now.”
“We very much wanted to be a community that was vibrant, and growing, but at the same time have some amount of control and keep as much of the character of Hinesburg that we could,” he said.
The growth has not been as rapid as it seems, Iadanza said. The post-recession years, for example, put a damper on things.
But the growth plan was not unanimous. Morgante, who said she is supportive of growth in the village, had concerns back then that remain today — floodplains that lie just west of the area.
“I am supportive of the growth in the village,” she said. But “what didn’t happen was strong enough regulations to protect the floodplain and the wetlands within the village area and to recognize that the town needed to be a little stronger in what would be open spaces within these developments.”
The village area is directly adjacent to the LaPlatte River on the east side of town — the Haystack and Hinesburg Center 2 properties are just to the east of the river — and south of the Patrick Brook. Data from the state shows that much of the area on the west side of the village is in a Federal Emergency Management Administration special flood hazard area.
Morgante, a member of the Hinesburg Land Trust who has worked on conservation efforts throughout the town, has for years said that these floodplains in the village are susceptible to flooding, and many of the land was classified as wetlands before being converted to agricultural land.
“We have not recognized the impacts of climate change, how we’re going to get more frequent and higher volume storms that are going to cause flooding, and Hinesburg village is expanding exactly where it shouldn’t be,” she said. “But it’s just a lack of resources on the part of the town to fully evaluate the impact of allowing development to continue in places within the village where, historically, they were wetlands.”
“It’s not a question of if it’s going to flood, it’s a question of when it’s going to flood, and taxpayers will pay for it,” she said.
The village core
Other questions remain as well. The character of the neighborhood after 400 new people have moved into town and the density of the village — and whether the town has the water and sewer infrastructure to support all the new growth.
Part of the reason the Haystack Crossing project and Hinesburg Center 2 project was held up for so long, Weinhagen said, was because the developers and town needed to drill a new well to service the area.
“We ran out of water — our water supply issues were really problematic for several years,” he said. “These projects got their initial approvals and then were stuck in limbo, because we just didn’t have water capacity.”
“We’ve largely resolved that, even though we still have some limitations on our water supply,” he added. “But it took a while. And new wells were drilled.”
In some ways, officials said, Hinesburg’s slow creep toward development has been a blessing — allowing them the opportunity to take their time.
“You drive through Williston, and you see what’s happened. They turned the switch on early, without a lot of long-term thought and Hinesburg was fortunate enough to not have the development pressures — enough distance away from the highway that the big developers with the big eyes passed us by for a while,” Pouech said. “It’s hard to hold back, being this close to Burlington, so Hinesburg has been very fortunate in that that pressure got delayed for a number of reasons, and that we’ve been able to get our ducks in a row, I think, so that as it comes, we’re ready for it.”
For Iadanza, growth has been slower than he expected.
“I expected things to happen faster than they are,” he said. “I don’t necessarily think that we’re growing too fast, as long as we grow in the right areas, and we do it thoughtfully. I don’t have problem with village core that’s growing and vibrant.”
