BELLOWS FALLS, Vt. (WCAX) – An all-day conference in Bellows Falls on Wednesday looks to the future by taking a closer look at the past.
Every two years, the Downtown and Historic Preservation Conference takes place in a community across Vermont. But it’s an issue that faces cities and towns across the region Whitney Hall in Enfield New Hampshire is getting a major facelift. A 4,800 square foot expansion in the back and a complete renovation of the historic downtown structure.
“We want to preserve our historic building. This building was built in 1900,” said Enfield Town Manager Ed Morris. It’s a $5.6 million project that taxpayers approved in 2022. And while the past is being preserved, new modern features like insulation and energy-efficient windows are being added. “You need to balance the cost of the project today and then the operational efficiency of the building. The comfort of the people, the usability of the building.”
Finding that balance was the focus of Wednesday’s preservation conference. Panel discussions and walking tours of the work being done to preserve the past in in Bellows Fall aims to inspire other communities to do the same.
“We hope that people can walk away from this with ideas, maybe out of the box thinking how they approach the challenges and opportunities that they have,” said Gary Holloway with the Vermont Department of Housing and Community Development.
A challenge facing Strafford is that town offices are too small. But fixing the 150-year-old building came with a million-dollar price tag which taxpayers rejected this week.
“I think people are attracted to authenticity,” said Ben Doyle, the president of the Preservation Trust of Vermont. He says that authenticity, like Main Street in Bellows Falls, can become an economic driver for future growth. “And now they are seeing the payoff of people coming and incomes in this town rising as a result of those investments that happened a long time ago. So, to that community that is thinking, ‘oh, I don’t know if we really want to invest in it.’ You got to invest in yourself.”