Swanton: Gateway town is opening doors

What do people in Swanton want to see happen in their community? That is a question that should be answered in the coming months. An outside consultant is working with the Chamber of Commerce to do an extensive survey that is focused on discovering what people like - and don't like - about downtown Swanton.

The study is being funded with a $40,000 Vermont Community Development Planning Grant and the Swanton "Downtown Vitality Task Force" has hired private consultants who will examine issues ranging from transportation patterns and aesthetics to the needs for services. The results of these studies will help this community plan for the future and take directions that are preferred by the populace. It is expected the study results will be released early next year.

This is part of Swanton's on-going downtown revitalization that has already taken several major steps to make this downtown more attractive and inviting.

While looking to the future, Swanton is also preserving its past that lends this community much of its considerable charm. Last September, the old Swanton Depot was moved a third of a mile, from the Poulin Grain property to an open field opposite the old covered bridge site off the County Road, a location of historical significance with the remnants of an old railroad roundtable.

The 125-year old building had been slated for demolition to allow for expansion at Poulin Grain, but now it is in the process of being transformed into a railroad interpretive center with space for the local historical society and meeting space. This fall a crew from the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps will be working to build a platform on the depot and install 200 feet of historic rails. Ultimately, said Ronald Kilburn, a retired judge and avid local historian who spearheaded the effort, it will become the departure point for the new Rail Trail.

A nature trail along the old rail bed from South River St. to the McQuam Shore is being constructed this fall. Designed as just a walking trail with no bikes or motorized vehicles allowed. Six students from the international Volunteers for Peace are scheduled to spend a couple of weeks working on the path this month.

On the village green, a new "historic fountain" will be installed and operating sometime this fall. The original fountain had been built in the 1890s and installed in the park in 1909. The original fountain was damaged and later removed years ago. Only a basin, usually filled with stagnant water, remained on the site and there were only old photos to show what that earlier three-tiered fountain had looked like.

The new one, built by a company in Alabama, will be "very similar to the old one," said Kilburn, and will include nighttime lighting. The town of Swanton, the Chamber of Commerce and the Historical Society are sharing the cost of this project. "It's a community project," Kilburn said.

Also in the park the bandstand has undergone extensive renovations, and the fence surrounding the Civil War monument is slated to be painted this fall, a cooperative project of the Youth Conservation Corps and the Volunteers for Peace.

Another exciting project, said Kilburn, has been a community video project funded by the Orton Family Foundation. A taping crew spent 10 days in Swanton this past summer, conducting about 75 interviews all sorts of people from the very young to senior citizens. The hours and hours of tape will be transformed into a 30-minute presentation that will be shown here at the end of this month. But all of the tape will be turned over to the historical society as a means of preserving local history. And the project has already preserved some earlier history when one resident came forward with film of the town from about 1940, "which we were able to get on digital film," said Kilburn. Also preserved is some footage of the village's devastating fire in 1970.

Meanwhile Kilburn's wife, Sandy, has also been working on another project to preserve the past for the benefit of the future. Last year voters agreed to sell the old Church Street School to the Lake Champlain Housing Development Corporation. Sandy Kilburn has been instrumental in seeing that the school, built around 1912 and on the state Register of Historic Places find a new use for the 2 1 st century.

The total cost of the project is about $2.38 million and according to Peter Richardson, president of Housing Vermont, about 40 percent of that cost was raised by the private sector, with a lot of help of the Franklin Lamoille Bank. The balance came from a variety of sources, including the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Commercial Development, the USDA Rural Development program and the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board.

For the last several years, there has been continued good news about jobs and industry

in and around Swanton. "Swanton has been benefiting from the strong economy," said Selectman Earl Fournier.

Besides some healthy growth in the local manufacturing base, there is now the possibility of a new marble operation in Swanton. Oliver Danforth has purchased an old marble quaff y off Route 7, one of two sites in the entire world that produces a prized red marble. That project is still has to win approval from local and state officials.

The quarry last operated about 50 years ago, said Fournier. The proposed operation would be a seasonal one, he said, from April through October with about 8 to 10 jobs. "It would help put Swanton on the map," he said, "We're encouraged."

There is still the Act 250 application and hearing and "some issues that need to be addressed," said Fournier, but so far at least there does not seem to be any significant opposition to the project.

And it now appears that a new Swanton-Alburg bridge, which will provide a link between New York's Northway and Vermont's I-89 should be open to traffic at the end of 2004. This project, which has been decades in the making, is designed to replace a narrow and increasingly decrepit two-lane bridge that is more than 60 years old.

But it has experienced one delay after another, the latest being that a rare turtle has apparently made its home along the existing causeway that the Canadians are especially anxious to see removed because it impedes water circulation in the Canadian arm of the Missisquoi Bay. The beginning of construction is still more than a year off, if there are no further delays.

Copyright Boutin-McQuiston, Inc. Sep 01, 2000
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