GMC gets renovation grant
Toolbox
By Gordon Dritschilo Staff Writer - Published: October 1, 2009
POULTNEY — It's been a dorm and a dean's house. Now Bentley Hall is $100,000 closer to being a community meeting house.
The Green Mountain College building is one of five benefiting from a total of $425,000 in federal funds distributed by the Preservation Trust of Vermont's Village Revitalization Initiative. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., announced the grants Tuesday.
"This is part of a program of general facility improvements across the campus," GMC spokesman Kevin Coburn said of the renovation effort. "We've already put in money of our own for roof repairs in 2008."
The house was built at the turn of the last century and bought by the college in the 1950s, Coburn said.
"It's been described as a Queen Anne colonial revival," he said. "It's a beautiful, stately building. Structurally it's very sound but it needs a lot of work to make it useful again."
The building sits on the corner of Bentley Avenue and College Street, across College Street from the main campus.
"A lot of students probably don't consider it part of Green Mountain College, don't realize it's one of our campus buildings," Coburn said.
It was a residence hall in the 1960s and served for a time as the home of the dean of students. Recently, it's been used primarily for storage. Coburn said it needs a new heating system, new flooring, paint inside and out, work on the porch and other repairs.
"The long-term plan is to make it into a building useable by the school and the town as a conference or meeting space," Coburn said.
The college got letters of support from the Poultney Downtown Revitalization Committee and the Poultney Area Chamber of Commerce. He said the college hopes to have work done by next spring, but needs to raise at least another $250,000.
Ann Cousins, a field service representative for the Preservation Trust, said the grants are awarded to projects with a community benefit and that the trust particularly liked the idea of a campus building that would be made available to the public.
"So often there are lines of demarcation between college properties and town properties or the town itself," she said. "This softens those boundaries, addresses that town-gown issue."
Cousins said GMC president Paul Fonteyn's contact with the trust over the project and the college's previous investment both helped its application.
"It showed this project was a priority for the college," she said.
The other grants were $100,000 for restoration of the Putney General Store, destroyed in a fire last year; $100,000 for Readsboro to buy and restore the Bullock building, which dates back to the 1880s; $25,000 to restore the 195-year-old Richmond Round Church; and $100,000 to restore the Newton Academy, a federal-style building dating back to 1810 in Shoreham.
gordon.dritschilo@rutlandherald.com
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