St Johnsbury Armory Redevelopment
- Details
- Created on Thursday, 04 May 2023 11:46
- Written by Meaghan Meachem
ST. JOHNSBURY - Due to a lack of available space, the town has chosen to remodel the armory to house the neighborhood's fire and police departments, as well as the dispatch center. In 1975, the state of Vermont deeded the property over to the town of Saint Johnsbury which used the armory for many years as a recreational facility primarily but also over the years it served many other purposes including the police many years ago and the restorative justice center. In 2009, the building was shuttered because of the expense of operations and so the armory went approximately 10 years with absolutely no activity.
Over that time, town officials tried to spur the development of the property. Many different iterations and ideas for redevelopment came and went through environmental assessment work. They also identified there were PCBs in the basement in the paint and this created a new level of anxiety within the private sector about redevelopment and so the town decided to take on the development itself seeing there was no other option which was the beginning stages of the downtown revitalization efforts. The town eventually started to participate in the downtown revitalization by redeveloping the armory.
The community decided to use the armory for new purposes after realizing that the fire and police departments' current facility, which is located at 1187 Main Street, was not enough and need more space. The armory has enough room for the departments to work properly and efficiently. Additionally, it will enable greater departmental cooperation, which is essential in emergencies.
Town authorities are excited about the possibilities of the refurnishing project, despite its early stages. Saint Johnsbury Assistant Town Manager Joe Kasprzak stated, "We desperately needed new space for all of our essential services. Fire, police, and dispatch. The armory was not suited for fire so we started discussions about PD and the regional dispatch center in the armory."
According to Kasprzak, he has been working on this project for almost 8 years now the project originally started around 5.8 million dollar project and since has grown to 11.2 million dollars and a lot of that has to do with the cost of remediation and the increased cost of development. Primarily supply chain and lack of labor.
The remediation of the component project is estimated at 2.5 million dollars and the construction phase of the project is 8.7 million dollars. Phase 1 which is the remediation is fully funded and receives an EPA, clean-up grant, which was 500,000 dollars. The town has also received a notice that they have rewarded 1.2 million dollars from the brownfield revitalization fund, which was the Agency of Commerce and Community Development. The town is also working with the Northwest regional planning commission which has EPA-funded revolving loan funds. The town is very excited to have the phase 1 component of the project complete. Phase 2 still has a gap in funding for the project which is approximately 3 million dollars and is in the works of finding different funding sources including a congressional direct spending request. The town sent rounds to the Ballets office, welches office, and Sanders office. Sanders is pushing this forward to Washington D.C. for the request. The town is optimistic that they will fully fund this project.
