Nearly three months after floodwaters devastated downtown Montpelier, the city plans to mark its progress with a celebration of food and music.
Montpelier announced a Reopening Celebration will be held on Friday, Oct. 6, and Saturday, Oct. 7, that will feature food, entertainment, sidewalk sales and other attractions to highlight the capital’s reopened businesses and give those that are still closed a chance to connect with the community.
The celebration integrates two events that the city has held before: the annual Taste of Montpelier food festival, with food trucks and local vendors, and the Montpelier Art Walk, an art display date and open house for studios.
Other events include a grand reopening party for the Kellogg-Hubbard Library, the weekly farmer’s market, a Lost Nation Theater show, live music from Shidaa Projects and a 24-hour Comics Day at the Center for Arts and Learning.
On Oct. 10, the Vermont Historical Society will celebrate the reopening of the Vermont History Museum with free admission, according to a press release.
Montpelier Alive, a downtown business organization, is helping to plan the reopening celebration. Executive Director Katie Trautz said the group timed the celebration to coincide with the height of foliage season, which is a busy time of year for tourists.
“We saw this as an opportunity to move these two staple events to a weekend that could celebrate how far we’ve come and also drive some visitation to our city, because there are indeed businesses that are open,” she said.
Business owners who are still rebuilding their storefronts have options to participate. Trautz said several still-closed businesses, like Roam Vermont, plan to have sidewalk sales. Taste of Montpelier will donate vendor fees from any participants outside of Montpelier to local vendors who couldn’t join, Trautz said. And busking performers also plan to donate their hat tips.
Businesses in Montpelier have been creative in making ends meet as their storefronts get rebuilt, according to the Montpelier Alive website. Capital Kitchen and Rebel Heart offered their wares online. Charlie O’s and Three Penny Taproom opened up their outdoor seating even as their indoor seating remains closed.
“Covid taught us a lot (about) how to do business under challenging circumstances,” Trautz said.
Capital Cannabis and Bailey Road moved into temporary storefronts outside of town, with Bailey Road just coming back to Montpelier last week. Trautz said that fears about business moves being permanent are misplaced. As of this month, about 10 businesses had decided to permanently close their doors. From what Trautz has heard, about 80% of businesses that closed due to flooding plan to reopen within a year of the flooding.
But in the meantime, it is “exhausting,” Trautz said.
“To be able to maintain the energy it takes and motivation to reopen in the end — these are really, really strong people, enduring people,” she said. “Very slowly the pieces are falling into place for them. But it takes a lot of perseverance to get there.”
The biggest challenges Trautz cited were the financial losses businesses suffered and the “urgent” lack of funding to compensate, particularly from the federal government. Some state funding and charity is available to business owners, but they are eligible only for loans from the feds.
Other hurdles include a shortage of contractors, complicated state and local guidance, and uncertainty about the possibility of future flooding, she said.
For Sharon Whyte Estes, the owner of Althea’s Attic Boutique, the reopening process meant digging in and learning new trades in order to get things done.
“It’s been a labor, not always of love,” she said. “But it’s the Vermont way, certainly Montpelier’s way.”
The boutique reopened with full hours on Oct. 1 with only some “cosmetic” issues still on the to-do list, she said. She’s spent the past couple months selling as much as she could at the weekly Capital City Farmer’s Market.
Even now that the store is reopened, Whyte Estes said she’s had to pivot the ways she runs the operation, like pausing her consignment sales and putting in shorter-turn orders with clothing manufacturers. She also stopped storing inventory in her basement after she lost $158,000 in goods when the basement flooded in July.
The boutique features jewelry and other products from local artisans who have also taken a hit from losing places to sell their creations. From what Whyte Estes has heard, they had to “go out and make it happen” just like she did.
Some of the boutique’s neighbors have not yet managed to make it happen. “The loss was too great,” she said.
“Downtown businesses are the lifeblood” of the city, she said. Even after Montpelier gains them back, “it’s going to feel a little different.”
But she is “very excited” about getting back to doing what she loves most — “welcoming people into the store.”
