[W]ith the town of Middlesex divided between a school in one corner and the town clerk’s office seven miles away in another, entrepreneurs Alan Newman, Russ Bennett and Mike Pelchar see a need for a new community center — the kind with grass, a playground and a place for festivals and fires.
They’ve found it at Camp Meade, the 10-acre property in Middlesex that they purchased last year and hope to turn into Middlesex’s de facto town center.
Camp Meade is a former Civilian Conservation Corps campus that has gone through several iterations since it was constructed in the 1930s, including a 1950’s-era motor court with pool and a WWII museum with planes and weaponry. For the last several years, most of the camp has served as the underused backyard of the successful Red Hen Baking Co., a bakery and cafe that started there 11 years ago.
But Newman, Bennett and Pelchar see potential in the grassy area, which is located near the confluence of the Winooski and Mad Rivers on Route 2. The large lawn is dotted with sculptures, including a giant pencil created by Bennett, and ringed by the unoccupied cottages of the defunct motor court.
Newman, 72, is a longtime Vermont entrepreneur who founded the Magic Hat Brewing Company and Seventh Generation Inc., and co-founded Gardener’s Supply Company. He and his partners envision Camp Meade as a place that can serve as a town center of sorts for Middlesex, a town now divided into two distinct areas.
Middlesex’s small village is on Route 2, a 15-minute drive from the Rumney School, its other focal point.
“Our village is very not-village-y,” Susan Clark, the town moderator, said.
Middlesex’s original village near Route 2 lost a third of its buildings in the devastating 1927 flood, and never really recovered. Even before the flood, Middlesex was divided. There’s a mountain between the school and the village, and at one point the town had two road commissioners and two schools, according to Sarah Seidman, the vice president of the town historical society. The school on the village side is now part of the state police barracks there.
“We have our own exit and nobody knew where Middlesex was” until Red Hen put it on the map, Clark said. “So many Vermont towns have a green with a post office and store and town hall, and all of those places are central. Middlesex is lacking that.”
This fall, the town held a community program called What’s Next Middlesex to set goals for the future. One of four priorities that emerged from that process was establishing a village hub that would help unite the community and give residents a sense of place.
Meanwhile, Newman, Bennett and Pelchar, longtime friends, were wondering what to do with the property they had acquired. Bennett, 68, an artist and builder, had designed and built the popular Red Hen. Pelchar, 67, a builder, is a Middlesex resident who was involved in What’s Next Middlesex.
And Newman, a Burlington resident who spends half of his time in Colorado these days helping to turn around a financially troubled hamburger company, just wanted to revive the Camp Meade space and create a place where arts and business would flourish together.
“The focus is on manufacturing, arts and crafts,” Newman said. “We’re trying to make a place that we like. We kind of have quirky tastes, but there are a lot of people around in Vermont who share our taste and want to support the creative economy.”
The three have formed a company called Planetary Matters for their Camp Meade work. They don’t yet have many firm plans for the space, though they know they’d like to find someone who wants to build and operate a pub on the property, and they plan to build a new 13,000-square-foot building that would include indoor meeting space and some more room for retail. Bennett’s company, Northland Construction, is expanding Red Hen’s kitchen in a project due to start this winter.
The group has talked to consultants and the town about adding sidewalks and trees to that section of Route 2 to make it more pedestrian-friendly, Pelchar said.
“One of the major complaints is that people drive too fast there,” he said.
Camp Meade recently became home to Flourish, a company that makes protein powder out of crickets, where Newman is an investor. Other tenants are the popular Red Hen and specialty food businesses such as the Mud Studio, a pottery studio, and Nutty Steph’s granola and chocolate. Planetary Matters hopes to attract more entrepreneurs that make food or crafts and interact with the public.
“This is just us making suggestions to the town,” said Bennett. “We’re not saying, ‘We know best.’ What we want to do is create this real sense of community. People are looking at their phones, doing all this stuff on the web, and we’re losing these opportunities for people to have shared experiences.”
Planetary Matters held small Sunday concerts and other events at Camp Meade over the summer and has plans for a winter solstice celebration Dec. 29.
Clark said it’s clear from the What’s Next Middlesex session that people in the town crave connection with one another and have the energy to create it. The other three areas of priority that came out of the session, other than creating a town hub, also focus on connection: trails, infrastructure and communication.
“This represents a huge opportunity for us to have the village come back to life,” said Seidman.
The town, like many in Vermont, is in the middle of a divisive debate over the future of the town’s Rumney School, Clark added. To her, that adds urgency to the quest for unifying residents.
“We have two sort-of community hubs and with one of them, we’re right in the middle of a big conflict,” she said.
Camp Meade’s revival “could be great, and I have high hopes,” she said. “The folks who are behind it really want to do well by Middlesex, and for Middlesex.”
Newman sees Camp Meade as a long-term project. After expanding the Red Hen building, “We’ll stop and figure, ‘OK, what do we need next?’ We’ll keep focusing on organic growth.”
