MIDDLEBURY — Local residents are celebrating the reopening of the downtown area after a 10-week period of road closures — the high-water mark of more than three years of construction.
Middlebury’s Main Street and Merchants Row had been shut off to road traffic since July 13, when construction crews began 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week shifts to finish a rail tunnel through the downtown area — part of a massive renovation that began in the summer of 2017.
The project involved near-constant construction in Middlebury’s downtown, often disrupting business for local merchants. Combined with the effects of Covid-19, the past 10 weeks of heavy construction — which completely cut off the downtown area to vehicle traffic — made the summer a particular challenge for the town’s livelihood.
On Friday, the construction ended, and more than 200 people gathered to celebrate the return to normalcy. Town officials rode a ceremonial freight train through the freshly completed tunnel Friday morning, and residents gathered by the intersection of Main Street and Merchants Row for a ribbon-cutting celebration.
“Four years ago, no one imagined the additional challenges from Covid our community and our state would face as we approached the high-water mark of the downtown rail and bridge project this summer,” Brian Carpenter, chairman of the Middlebury Selectboard, told the crowd gathered on Main Street.
Carpenter, Middlebury College President Laurie Patton, Town Manager Kathleen Ramsey and Middlebury community liaison Jim Gish were among those who boarded the train that became the first to travel through the new tunnel.
“It was a great, rewarding day for those of us who’ve been working on this project for the past three or four years,” said Gish, who has been keeping residents updated on the project through his “Middlebury Bridges” blog.
The $71 million “Bridge and Rail project” began in the summer of 2017, when the Vermont Agency of Transportation concluded that two 100-year-old bridges on Main Street and Merchants Row had become hazards to traffic passing over them and had to be torn down.
The old bridges were replaced with temporary ones that summer, with the long-term goal of building a rail tunnel that would provide both increased open space downtown and smoother movement for freight trains — and soon enough, planners hope, passenger trains — through town.
Middlebury has been a hub for freight trains traversing Vermont’s western corridor since rail was installed there in the 1840s. Now, its section of state-owned rail tracks is a key artery for delivering fuel oil, gas and other materials to Addison County and northern Vermont. The project became an opportunity for the state “to reinvest in rebuilding the rail corridor and preparing it for the freight needs of the future,” Gish said.
These past 10 weeks, when those temporary bridges were removed and the tunnel was constructed during 24-hour construction shifts, formed the crucial part of the project.
“That had to be a relatively short period, in order to manage the disruption of downtown and to the railroad,” Gish said.
With the tunnel open, the land where bridges previously stood could be filled in, and just the final touches are needed on the expanded town green area, which will be more spacious than it’s been for nearly 200 years.
“The idea is that this would restore to Middlebury the original dimensions of the town green, which had been kind of cut in half with the advent of the railroad in the 1840s,” Gish said.
The three-year construction period posed many challenges for Middlebury businesses, and several local businesses had to close. Now, business owners say, things are beginning to look up — construction is ending and Middlebury College students can once again visit the downtown area.
“The town feels really excited to just be able to get back down here,” said Abbey Lamay-West, owner of Vermont’s Own Gifts and Goods on Main Street. “Between Covid and the construction, there’s been a sense of ‘how are things going to go.’ Now we’re feeling this energy and hope as people can start coming downtown again.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the date when the shutdown of the downtown area began. It was July 13.
