Goddard College Campus Is Under Contract, Trustees Say

The Goddard College campus property in Plainfield is under contract with an unnamed buyer, trustees said on Tuesday.

The news comes just weeks after the tiny alternative school announced that it will close at the end of this term. The 117-acre property includes a former agricultural estate called Greatwood.

Trustees said they had received several offers for the property. The buyer they chose "submitted the only offer that would allow us to meet our fiduciary responsibility in time to pay our faculty and staff, pay off the debts to our creditors and ensure a smooth transition for our students," the prepared statement said.

The announcement is a disappointment to locals who had hoped a nonprofit called Cooperation Vermont would be able to buy the campus. The property was most recently appraised at around $3 million.
Cooperation Vermont made an offer of $3.4 million that expired on May 3, according to the group's director, Michelle Eddleman McCormick. At the time, she said her group wanted to use the campus "as a place of transformational learning, experimentation and community resilience."

The group also wanted to ensure that current campus tenants, such as the Maplehill School and Farm, Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism, the Goddard Café, and the WGDR radio station could stay in place.

Agri-Mark, the Massachusetts company that owns Cabot Creamery cooperative, also houses some of its employees on the Goddard campus.

Eddleman McCormick said on Tuesday that she thinks the trustees chose the other buyer — whom she has identified repeatedly on social media as a local real estate developer — because he was a safer bet. The developer did not respond to emails from Seven Days last week.

"They know he has the money and they think we won’t be able to pull it off as fast," Eddleman McCormick said in a message to Seven Days. "But in reality if they had engaged with us in good faith back in [February] when we first contacted them — we could have closed this already."

Although the trustees' announcement makes clear that Cooperation Vermont is out of the running, it will not end speculation about what residents can expect to see next on the campus.
Goddard ended its fully residential programs more than 20 years ago, offering instead virtual programs and short residencies. For years, the campus has seen little activity, and many of its buildings need updates.

Many locals have said they hoped the campus would be used for affordable housing. But almost all of the affordable housing built in Vermont uses federal low-income tax credits to defray construction costs, and Goddard's campus, far from public transportation or a village center, make it unsuitable for federally subsidized affordable housing programs.

Cooperation Vermont is holding a meeting on campus this Saturday, June 1, to talk about the future of the campus. One of the organizers, Plainfield resident Natascha Deininger, said meeting-goers will ask the Goddard board to reveal who is buying the campus and what their plans are for it. They'd like the trustees to reconsider the sale if it's not in the community's best interest.

The group also wants a guarantee from trustees that the existing tenants will be able to stay in place, Deininger said in an interview on Tuesday.

"We're here to say we want to preserve it as something that will benefit the community," she said. "It would be nice if the community had a little bit of say."