Putney celebrates 25 permanently affordable apartments at Alice Holway Drive
Buildings along Sacketts Brook in Putney village, where Alice Holway Drive Apartments opened in late September. Photo: Putneypics, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Residents, funders and state officials gathered under a tent beside the Putney Community Gardens on Sept. 30 to mark the opening of Alice Holway Drive Apartments, a 25-home, permanently affordable building co-owned by Windham & Windsor Housing Trust and Evernorth.
Stormy Gammon, one of the first people to move in, told the crowd she had not prepared a speech. “We got the phone call that we were able to move in, that we were no longer homeless, and our combined nervous systems just relaxed,” she said, in remarks reported by The Commons on Oct. 6 and also quoted by the Housing Trust. Gammon said her family had been staying with the Springfield Supported Housing Program, that she had wanted to live in Putney so her autistic son could go to school there, and that she now drives eight minutes to work.
Five of the apartments are set aside for households experiencing or at risk of homelessness, with Southeastern Vermont Community Action providing wraparound services, The Commons and the developers’ announcements said. The Housing Trust’s SASH For All program is offered to any resident who wants it. Executive Director Elizabeth Bridgewater told The Commons the organizations waited until the building was fully occupied to hold the celebration so residents would have a voice at the event, not only during permitting.
The town issued a permit in 2022. Neighbors appealed it to Environmental Court and the Vermont Supreme Court, and an Act 250 jurisdictional opinion was also appealed to both courts, resulting in four cases that delayed construction by two years, according to the Housing Trust’s Oct. 8 recap and The Commons. Kathy Beyer, Evernorth’s senior vice president for real estate development, told the gathering, “I have worked over 25 years as a nonprofit housing developer, and I can tell you that when your project gets killed, it is difficult and it is deflating. This team did not waver.”
Alex Farrell, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Housing and Community Development, said the process makes it “a little too easy to say ‘no'” and that it is time to “rebalance this so that we don’t have to go to Superior Court twice, the Supreme Court twice, to finally hear ‘yes.'”
The $15 million project sits on the same small parcel as the community gardens and the farmers market, which were kept on the site. The building uses ground-source heat pumps, a high-performance thermal shell and rooftop solar; Beyer said that combination avoids 92 tons of carbon a year. The MOOver commuter bus is scheduled to serve Alice Holway Drive with two morning and two afternoon trips between Brattleboro and Bellows Falls.
Evernorth’s 481 Fund II, with TD Bank as investor, provided $8.6 million in federal low-income housing tax credit equity administered by the Vermont Housing Finance Agency, plus $525,000 in federal investment tax credits, the developers said. The Vermont Housing & Conservation Board contributed more than $4 million, including $3 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds. TD Bank provided an $8 million construction loan. The Housing Trust’s recap is dated after the Sept. 30 ceremony; an Evernorth post dated Oct. 1 described the celebration as happening “today.”
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