Breaking News! $1.2 Million Land Purchase will be Voted at Town Meeting
Friday, January 29, 2010

The Selectboard has signed a purchase and sales agreement with Richard LeBoeuf to buy 51 acres in the center of the West Village. They have approved an Article for the Warning for Town Meeting asking the voters to authorize bonds for the purchase price of $1.2 million.

The vote will be by Australian ballot on Town Meeting day on Tuesday, March 2. An information meeting is planned for Monday, March 1, at 7 p.m. in the Town Hall.

This is an historic opportunity for the town to shape the direction of development in the West Village. The land lies on the south side of Ferry Road behind the Town Hall. It connects directly with the Burns property that the town already owns. It also extends east to Route 7, and includes the vacant land at the intersection of Route 7 and Ferry Road. It includes open fields, wooded sections, ponds and wetlands.

The action took place at a Special Meeting of the Selectboard that began Friday morning at 10 a.m and then continued later in the afternoon. It was the culmination of several weeks of intensive negotiations. Talks originally started in April, were discontinued, and than began again in early January.

Friday morning Richard LaBoeuf said he woke up and asked himself, “Am I doing the right thing?” He said, “My father told me never to sell that land.” His father was Albert LaBoeuf, Charlotte’s village blacksmith for many years.

Richard LaBoeuf, who is 79 years old, was deeded 25 aces and the residence where he lives from his parents Albert and Odiana LaBoeuf in 1980. He purchased another 29 acres, at the intersection of Ferry Road and Route 7, in 1994. He will keep the residences and several acres on Ferry Road, including the acre where the US Post Office is located. The Town has agreed to buy the remaining 51 acres of vacant land.

LaBoeuf is hoping to fulfill a longtime dream of adding onto a summer cottage that he owns at Cedar Beach so that he can live there all or a portion of the year.

Selectboard Chair Charles Russell said the purchase is important to the Town for future expansion of municipal buildings. He said, “The state has told us we can't build anything more on this land,” referring to the lot where the Town Hall, Library and Quinlan School are now located. Much of the area is wetlands, and the new property will provide enough additional space to allow for wetlands mitigation if there is further development.

LaBoeuf said that he would like to see the Town use a portion of the land to develop elderly housing. He spent a considerable amount of money a decade ago for planning and engineering designs for a sand filtration system to support an elderly housing project that he had hoped to develop.

The Selectboard was unanimous in support of the purchase of the property. Present for the vote were members Charles Russell, Jenny Cole, Ed Stone and Frank Thornton, while Winslow Ladue attended by telephone.

The aerial photo, taken by George Lathrop in April 1942, looks east over the “four corners” of the West Village. The vacant land between Greenbush Road and Route 7 (in its original alignment) has now been filled in with the Senior Center and Fire & Rescue Services on the north (left side of Ferry Road), and the Town Hall and Library and Post Office on the south (right side of Ferry Road). The 51 acres that the Town has offered to buy extends south and east to Route 7. This photo belongs to the Collection of Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History, Middlebury, Vermont, and is used here with their permission.