Two community projects in Windham County have each received $50,000 through the Preservation Trust of Vermont's Paul Bruhn Historic Revitalization Grants to activate and reuse historic structures.
The Friends of Vernon Center will use its award to convert the Governor Hunt House into a community center, while the town of Athens will use its funding to renovate its 19th-century Meeting House.
A total of $625,000 has been awarded for these two projects and seven others through the state. The grants range from $50,000 to $100,000 and will be used for restoration and repairs of windows, façades, foundations, interior spaces, and roofs.
The Preservation Trust says it received applications totaling over $2.5 million in requests.
“The applications represented an amazing array of projects, including arts spaces, community centers, village stores, and more. It was tough to choose among so many great projects,” said Ben Doyle, president of the Preservation Trust, in a news release.
Vernon lost its economic engine with the closing of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in 2014. The Friends of Vernon Center has been actively seeking ways to counter this, and they say the grant for renovations to the circa-1779 Governor Hunt House will help.
“Transforming the Governor Hunt House into a community center will help to make Vernon a more attractive place to live, work, and visit, thereby improving the economic environment of the town and continuing its recovery from the severe impacts of the shutdown of Vermont Yankee,” said Friends leader Martin Langeveld. “The community center will also serve as a focal point for future village development in the area, which will attract new residents and new businesses.”
Candace Damon of the Athens Historic Preservation Society said that “resilient communities need places where the diversity of the community - its elderly, parents, singles, and children, the prosperous and less so - can gather, exchange news, gossip, mourn, celebrate, and find common ground. This is especially true of low and moderate income communities that have fewer institutional supports than more affluent places.”
Damon said the restored Meeting House, which received a Bruhn grant for window and façade repairs, “will be such a place while also providing entrepreneurial opportunities for community members, opportunities that will generate earned income for the Meeting House itself.”
The Bruhn Historic Revitalization Grants, named in memory of PTV's founding president, Paul Bruhn, was created in partnership with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and the National Park Service, to help rural communities throughout the country.