RuralEdge opens 40 homes at Newport Crossing after a $21.5 million redevelopment
A Newport Waterfront Recreation Path sign on the Lake Memphremagog shore, near the city portion of the Newport Crossing project. Photo: Niranjan Arminius, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
RuralEdge marked the completion of Newport Crossing on Sept. 25, a $21.5 million project that added 40 affordable and mixed-income rental homes in the City of Newport and in Newport Center and cleaned up two brownfield sites.
Vermont Business Magazine reported Oct. 2, in a release from the housing nonprofit, that community leaders and funders gathered for a ribbon-cutting at the former convent in Newport. Speakers included Treasurer Mike Pieciak, RuralEdge board president Nikole Brainard, Executive Director Patrick Shattuck, Newport City Council President Carter Finegan, and officials from Community National Bank, the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston, the Vermont Housing & Conservation Board, the Vermont Housing Finance Agency and NeighborWorks America.
“This project transformed properties that once presented significant environmental challenges into quality, affordable homes for community members in the Northeast Kingdom,” Shattuck said.
In Newport, RuralEdge reused the former convent as 26 mixed-income apartments, keeping the building’s historic character, the release said, including units with large windows looking toward Lake Memphremagog. Stained glass, furniture in a seating area, and a kitchenette in the community room were salvaged from the convent. In Newport Center, the organization demolished two buildings at 4116 and 4127 Vermont Route 105 and put up new structures meant to fit the village streetscape, with 14 homes, including four three-bedroom townhouses as well as one- and two-bedroom units.
The Newport Daily Express, writing Sept. 28, also put the split at 26 apartments in the converted convent and 14 in two new buildings in Newport Center, and said the ribbon-cutting marked the end of the project’s first phase. The newspaper reported that RuralEdge intends to turn the former Sacred Heart School into 32 additional rental apartments, and that roofing contractors were already on site that Friday, ahead of stabilization work expected to begin Nov. 1. Vermont Business Magazine, citing the organization, said construction on those 32 units is slated to start in 2027.
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