Plan Damages Historic Site

Plan Damages Historic Site

On March 17, a state Act 250 hearing was held to review VTC’s plans for an external pellet boiler at Randolph Center’s historic Red Schoolhouse. Though a furnace already exists, VTC intends to heat the building with a boiler system including two silos towering 30-feet.

Residents are concerned about damage to aesthetics and historic character. The schoolhouse site anchors our nationally recognized historic district many worked for decades to establish. The schoolhouse and adjacent schoolyard represent the personal history of many generations. Two centuries of residents have final resting places in the cemetery just a few yards from the boiler site.

VTC’s plans will destroy the historic integrity of the area between the schoolhouse and cemetery, undisturbed and historically intact for over 100 years. The shadow of the silos will literally fall upon the grave of Thomas Pember, killed by Indians in 1780. The boiler complex will be glaringly visible. We’ll see this eyesore each time we drive the East Bethel or South Randolph Roads, when we bring kids to the schoolhouse playground, and when we walk among departed loved ones.

It’s not the pellet boiler concept that’s objectionable -- it’s the location. Alternatives were offered by residents to reduce impact to aesthetics and historic qualities. These ranged from other campus locations, to integrating the boiler into other schoolhouse modifications. VTC is an architectural engineering school, yet representatives balked at changing the current plan to dig up the historically sensitive schoolyard.

It makes you wonder where “the line” is? Can we balance expansion against preservation of fragile elements that make Vermont special? Isn’t a 100-year-old schoolyard where your great-grandfather played worth saving? Isn’t an irreplaceable historic site valuable, something to cherish, not dismantle?

There’s more to Randolph Center than VTC. There are tax-paying property owners, many abutting VTC. We live here, raise families here, worship here, grow old here, and die here. We do not deserve to be marginalized by state entities receiving permission for controversial projects from other state agencies. We deserve respect and require local and state processes to work and not be hijacked by special interests.

The current location is inappropriate for the pellet boiler project. Check out the drawings at http://www.anr.state.vt.us/site/cfm/act250/detail.cfm?ID=23266.

Aesthetics and historic integrity should still matter in Vermont and be more than rhetoric. Property owners should still have influence and a reasonable chance of protecting their community from exploitation.

This schoolhouse, its schoolyard, and its proximate relationship with the sacred ground of our cemetery have been preserved for over 100 years. This should not unravel due to an unwillingness to bend.

VTC has a chance to demonstrate its commitment, interest, and respect for the historic community that hosts it. Randolph Center is watching.

Dan LaLumia

Randolph Center