Spring 2010
Vigilant Vergennes
Revived from '70s nadir, determined small city works to hold its gains
By Leslie Wright
Photographed by Jordan Silverman
Scott Gaines, 46, lives and breathes Vergennes. A basketball star at Vergennes Union High School, he married the girl he had a crush on in second grade. He lives downtown, owns the local insurance agency, is president of the chamber of commerce and coaches three sports teams. He likes to say Vergennes is a little city with a big heart.
Indeed, the citizens of this small city have stared down some big-city problems over the years, rescuing historic buildings, saving Main Street storefronts and generally beating the odds in a place that exists in the shadow of Middlebury, a prosperous college town to the south, and Burlington, the state's largest city to the north.
The reopening of the Vergennes Opera House in the late 1990s is often cited as cementing the city's renaissance. Saved from the wrecking ball, the Opera House today is a hub of cultural happenings, from concerts to theater productions, that lifted the entire community.
Still, some worry that the Opera House effect may be wearing off. Last fall, 20 percent of Vergennes' downtown commercial real estate was vacant, more than double the vacancies in neighboring suburban Chittenden County. A restaurant, a natural foods store, a goldsmith and a laundromat all stood empty, all in the core of downtown.
"The economy could be a deciding factor. If the economy's going to force more vacancies, it [Vergennes] could go backwards. It's at a tipping point," says Jackson Evans, executive director of the Vergennes Opera House and one of the city's new guard of 30-somethings who've recently moved in and play an active role in civic life here.
Others are not daunted by the numbers, however. Anyone who's been here for a while can recall much grittier times. "Ten years ago, we had a 30 percent vacancy rate," says Bill Benton, a sixth-generation resident and local real estate appraiser. "A lot of the same spaces are empty, but they've been fixed up in the meantime, so hopefully they won't take as long to rent."
Vergennes, population 2,700, sits just off the busy commuting corridor between Middlebury and Burlington in rural Addison County. Technically a city — the state's first and smallest — because it has a mayor, the designation lends this one-square-mile piece of real estate its brand identity. Otter Creek passes through with a dramatic set of falls at the west end of Main Street, another distinctive characteristic of the place. In the summer, boaters navigate up from Lake Champlain to take advantage of the free dockage in the basin at the foot of the falls.
On Main Street, Vergennes' historic downtown is bookended by two historic landmarks, Bixby Memorial Free Library and Vergennes Opera House.
Built in 1911, the Bixby, to the west, is a substantial yellow brick Greek Revival with imposing Ionic columns outside and parchment-colored faux-marble columns inside. Natural light filters through the glass dome high above, imparting an airy atmosphere. The faint scent of old books and the rows of wood card catalogs create nostalgia for anyone who's ever hunkered down in a library to read, research or write a paper.
The Opera House, which predates the Bixby by 14 years, went dark in the 1970s, but, after its restoration, stands grandly at the east end of Main Street.
In between these gems, three blocks of shops in brick or gray stone storefronts offer a diversity of goods and services. Vergennes is a community where modern life hums along in harmony with the historic, and the gentrified coexists beside the everyday. Downtown shops, many of them along a unique elevated sidewalk, range from the utilitarian — a plumbing and heating company, a fuel company and two charity thrift shops — to the upscale: a bistro, two art galleries, a dress boutique and a gourmet chocolate shop.
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Despite its official designation as a city, Vergennes is definitely more Our Town than urban. When Gaines, the lifelong booster, describes what he likes about Vergennes, he could be talking about any small town in the state. "We don't have traffic jams. You can walk down the street and probably be friends with 95 percent of the people ... at least you probably know who they are. That's kind of neat," he says.
Nevertheless, Vergennes has faced challenges on a scale more akin to a larger place. Truck traffic is a perennial issue. Main Street is a major transport route, and 18-wheelers rumble through town with grinding frequency. Gaines once pulled an all-nighter peering out a second-floor office on Main Street. He was counting trucks and looking to see exactly what was moving through the city in the wee hours. That was about 15 years ago and 400 trucks a day rolled through, a number that Gaines guesses has only grown. At that time, the city was considering building a bypass, an idea that died, largely due to cost and concerns about how it could affect downtown business, Gaines says.
Blight is another periodic problem, one that has spurred local residents into action several times over the years. Thirty years ago, Vergennes was most noted for its saloons, Benton recalls. "I don't think anybody had a lot of pride in the community. It was pretty rough and tumble."
Benton is 53, tall and white-haired, with a manner that's as easygoing as his attire — blue jeans and weathered brown clogs with a hole worn through at the bending point. His office overlooks the thundering falls. Benton's roots here are deep. His family owned a spark plug factory that supplied Indian motorcycles, among others. He's converted a portion of the old factory into his home. His wife owns the flower shop on Main Street. The spark plug company was sold years ago and has evolved through several iterations into Goodrich, an aerospace manufacturer that employs about 800 people.
Determined to initiate change for the better, a group of locals took it upon themselves to pool their resources and restore the historic Stevens House in the late '70s. The landmark former hotel on the city's green now houses a bank, offices and a bar.
That cooperative effort repeated itself 20 years later with the restoration of a building known as the Basin Block. Like Stevens House, the Basin Block building is smack in the center of downtown right on Main Street. It had become an eyesore, Liz Markowski recalls. Squatters had moved in, there was a broken-down couch outside, storefronts were empty and trash blew down the sidewalk. City officials were pushing to convert the property into low-income housing, but a group of locals pooled resources and restored the Basin Block building.
"We really loved Vergennes, and we could see that the bones were good, but it needed a new dress," says Markowski, who was president of the chamber of commerce and owned one of the few viable retail businesses at the time.
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Of all the revitalization projects that have been tackled over the years, the Opera House is the most referenced for changing the Little City's course for the long term. When effort was focused on the Basin Block, attention was already on the 19th-century Opera House. Once the cultural center of the community, the stage had been dark for two decades. The upper floors had been condemned, the roof leaked and the walls were bolstered by steel rods running at eye level on the second floor. But an ongoing community effort started in 1993, and after a nearly $2-million restoration project, the Opera House reopened in 1997.
Revival of the 1897 gem created a sense of pride as large as this city is small. When the Opera House was revived, the Little City was on a roll. Of course, so was the economy. Businesses moved in and thrived, like the popular Black Sheep Bistro that was busy every night of the week, even in the dead of winter.
Then the economy tanked. Looking back, some worry that the good times meant people became less vigilant about watching for telltale signs of decay creeping back in. Empty storefronts are an unwelcome reminder of the past.
Not for Markowski, though. She is bullish on Vergennes. She cites Fat Hen, the closed natural foods store, which was owned by her daughter-in-law, as the only one directly affected by the economy. The other enterprises closed due to varying circumstances other than the economy, she says.
"We're weathering this storm nicely," said Markowski. "For the scary time we're in, Vergennes is not in a scary time."
Others point to an influx of new residents as another reason for optimism.
Vergennes' location, a 40-minute commute to Burlington and 20 minutes to Middlebury, has put it in a sort of no man's land between two economic centers, but that has also had an ancillary benefit. Real estate prices are more reasonable here. That's drawn a cadre of young couples who have bought homes — often fixing them up — and injected new energy into the place.
Couples like Jackson Evans and his wife, Katja, who were searching for a place where they could walk to a downtown, live in a historic home and be involved.
"We were in the process of starting our family, and it just seemed like an ideal community," says Jackson, 31, who became executive director of the Opera House after he moved here. "We wanted to be around other people and other people our age who were going through the same thing. That sort of took us into Vergennes."
Hannah Weisman and Mike Peluse, both in their early 30s, were looking for a neighborhood they could afford that wasn't "in the boonies," says Weisman. They also jumped into community life. He plays the French horn in the Champlain Philharmonic Orchestra and she is president of the Little City Players, which are both based in the Opera House.
This group of newcomers coupled with the heavy lifting that was done in the '70s and repeated in the '90s are the reasons local leaders, like Benton, are not daunted by unusually high vacancy rates in prime real estate.
For one thing, the community is rallying yet again. The Vergennes Partnership, which played a key role in the '90s revitalization, has been reconstituted. While the group does not have financial tools, it is an important part of the city's status as a Designated Downtown, which qualifies the city for grants, tax credits and loans for beautification projects and historic building restoration. The city, meanwhile, has instituted a permit that allows landlords to get permission for a variety of potential businesses in a particular space ahead of time, speeding the process when a tenant does come along. Several landlords have taken advantage of the permits, says Mel Hawley, city manager.
Count Gaines in the camp that sees a sunny future for Vergennes. He's seen it all before. "Somebody once stated Vergennes is a little city with the biggest heart," Gaines says, adding, "Because this little city seems to pull itself together to keep things going."
