This story by Patrick Bilow was first published in News & Citizen on Feb. 5, 2026.
A Morristown Selectboard meeting last Monday saw the highest attendance in years, board chair Don McDowell said, but there was one person who everyone noticed was missing.
Neither Garret Hirchak, the owner of Morristown’s Manufacturing Solutions Inc., nor a representative for the company appeared at the meeting to speak about the company’s controversial industrial park proposal on Route 100 across the highway from the Morristown-Stowe Airport.
“This is a surprise to the chair as well,” McDowell said at the Feb. 2 meeting, seated before a room of at least 60 Morristown residents who craned their necks like owls looking for Hirchak in the crowd. Some of them held “Stop MSI Quarry” signs, which someone had printed and handed out at the door.
The proposed 89-acre project, which is currently undergoing Act 250 land use review with the state, has drawn criticism by residents and the selectboard for a particular facet of the project — quarrying a wooded knoll at the center of the property. According to Act 250 documents, the knoll is made up of quartz rock that would produce silica dust when crushed — dust that opponents point to as potentially harmful to humans, known to cause cancer and other respiratory diseases.
Hirchak, operating under Sunrise Development LLC, has been trying for years to secure state and local permits to build an industrial park on the 89-acre plot of land across from the airport. The company’s proposal states it must clear the knoll not only to make way for the industrial park, but also to fund the initial phase of construction, according to Act 250 documents.
For as long as it’s been proposed, Morristown residents have expressed profound concern with MSI’s quarry, particularly those who live near to the property. The selectboard similarly opposed it in a letter to Vermont’s Land Use Review Board in September, despite the Morristown Development Review Board’s approval of the operation in 2023.
It’s now up to the state whether MSI can crush and extract rock.
Even though Hirchak was absent from the Feb. 2 meeting, attendees insisted on keeping the agenda item open and making public comments about the project, which lasted for nearly an hour.
Brittney Rogers and her husband Graham, who own Stowe Tile and Stone, recently moved with two kids to a house less than a mile from the proposed quarry operation. They bought their home before hearing about MSI’s plans.
“I was hoping to meet this guy face to face,” Brittany Rogers said after the meeting. “I want to hear why he thinks this is a good idea, and how he thinks it’s not going to destroy this community.”
According to McDowell, Hirchak requested time on the selectboard’s agenda, but McDowell did not indicate what would have been the topic of discussion.
Hirchak told the News & Citizen that he made no such request and, rather, has been seeking a response to a letter he sent to the selectboard in December. He did not respond to the newspaper’s questions about why he was absent from the Feb. 2 meeting or whether he might appear at a future one.
The letter to the selectboard, dated Dec. 19 and signed by lawyer James Dean Mahoney, draws a comparison between MSI’s proposed quarry and the nearby “Percy Pit,” which received Act 250 approval for operation in 2003.
The letter asks why the selectboard would let that deadline pass with little discussion, when the Percy Pit “undoubtedly is of the same silica content as that located on the MSI Airport Industrial Park property.”
“Given the way the selectboard has chosen to involve itself in this silica debate, it is a fair question for the developer to ask — and it is a question which all citizens in Morrisville deserve an answer to,” the letter reads.
It also states that Sunrise Development “has in mind the comments and concerns from the selectboard regarding the alleged silica danger associated with the removal of the knoll.”
Some residents have expressed concerns about the Percy Pit during public discussions about the MSI quarry, according to selectboard meeting recordings, and many of the comments thanked the board for its letter to the Land Use Review Board in September.
When asked about Hirchak’s letter, Morristown Town Manager Brent Raymond told the News & Citizen that the selectboard is not required to respond to “assumptions” made as public comment.
“There’s been no data presented to the selectboard that brings up any of the same concerns (about silica),” Raymond said.
