Winston Prouty housing project gets site plan approval

By Chris Mays, Brattleboro Reformer, published March 21, 2025.

BRATTLEBORO — In a 6-0 vote Wednesday, the Development Review Board approved the Winston Prouty Center for Child and Family Development’s site plan for the first phase of a housing project that calls for 28 apartment units in a three-story modular building and 22 parking spaces. 

Chloe Learey, executive director of the Prouty center, anticipates an appeal is likely. Neighbors opposed to the project have spoken up at DRB meetings. 

Plans call for razing the green Wheeler House to make room for the new building. Ultimately, the hope is to get as many as 300 units on the campus in what’s being dubbed The Village at Winston Prouty.

Brattleboro Zoning Administrator Brian Bannon said the proposal before the board “isn’t just a straightforward development in the mixed use zoning district.”

“It’s development in a planned unit development that’s also a mixed use district so you end up with a combination of different regulations,” he said. “And you have more flexibility because there’s a campus master plan, and the campus master plan allows for development pattern that kind of replicates and is compatible with the existing campus.”

Bannon said the Prouty center’s “master plan did call for a parcel in this area, and it did allow for residential uses.”

“I could have asked for this to be an amendment to the planned unit development as well as site plan but I felt that was premature,” he said. “And I think the time to amend the planned unit development is when the final plan for the whole build out is concretized. Because otherwise, we’d have to probably return as things are modified as they get more information.”

Board Chairwoman Nora Dissinger suggested project leaders can return with a sketch plan review before finalizing what other phases of the project will look like.

“I would say it would have been premature for us to come with the big plan,” Learey said, “also because we’re learning and trying to figure out how to do this in the best way possible for the community.”

After the start of the hearing on Feb. 19, the board met privately in deliberative session then asked the Prouty center to return with more information on several items. Mark Westa, project manager and landscape architect, said Wednesday that the fire department “had no concerns about that driveway access” but made requests that include having fire vehicle access along the south side of the building and providing two new fire hydrant locations. Westa also showed a proposed lighting plan to meet zoning standards and draft language of a shared parking agreement. 

Conditions in a draft decision, which Bannon put together but Dissinger had not yet signed Thursday morning, included the submission of a parking allocation and management plan to the zoning administrator. The zoning administrator “may administratively approve site plan refinements to improve” Americans with Disabilities Act access to first floor units, and “minor site plan modifications to avoid wetland and riparian buffer impacts.” 

The board asked for testimony on whether the project could be moved. 

“We cannot feasibly alter the arrangement of the site without reducing the scope of the project,” Westa said, citing wetlands and steep slopes as constraints. “It respects the wooded buffer, and we feel that it both meets the intent of the mixed use district and the intent of the PUD and kind of what campus is all about.”

A group of residents, who live close to the center but are not considered abutters, signed a petition through the zoning process to testify about issues they have with the aesthetics of the proposed building and the potential for higher volumes of traffic. They worry their home values might go down as a result. 

Michael Averill, vice chairman of the board who recused himself as he’s a neighbor to the project, said the site plan can be denied based on the project not being compatible with the character of the neighborhood. He raised concerns about the development being near wetlands, sharing correspondence he had with a state wetlands expert, and previously spoke about wanting to see a plan for all the phases. 

“You, the board, you know this structure just isn’t right for Maple Street, and I implore you to become the conscience, Winston Prouty’s conscience on this thing and for the first phase of this project of something that could be quite wonderful,” he said. “That whole program up there could really be great.”

Town Planning Technician Stephen Hayes said traffic issues aren’t germane to the application. 

“Act 250 doesn’t apply here,” he said, “because the town moved ahead with an application to state to have an Neighborhood Development Area designated, which was approved. There was a public process that goes into this as there was with the rezoning. We did not receive any negative feedback on those things. This was approved by the state two years ago, and that covers a very large area of the town.”

Westa said his team has “no plans to be within the wetland boundary with the buffer, and therefore we do not need to have the wetlands permit but we are certainly going to work with the wetlands program … to make sure we follow what they want.”

Asked Thursday about if he plans to appeal the decision, Averill told the Reformer, “I guess it’s something I’ve got to think about.” He said he was surprised he wasn’t able to share any of his wetlands information on the screen at the meeting Wednesday after being able to do so at the previous meeting. 

Emails “pretty much showed me that the delineation that they were using for all this design was something that was obsolete,” Averill said. He described feeling anger in the room that he hadn’t been expecting. 

“Having sat on the DRB for the last six years and having been a land use engineer for 20 years before that, I do have some background in this and I didn’t get the feel that last night’s meeting was friendly and open to the interested persons,” he said. 

His next door neighbor on Maple Street, Mona Williams, spoke at the last meeting and suggested the project could be downsized. 

Learey previously noted a housing study in town identified the need for 500 units two years ago.

“[W]e’ve been working really hard to figure out how to make it possible because we know our community really, really, really needs housing,” she said of the project at the February meeting, adding that the proposed housing will be available to people of all different incomes. 

Fred Breunig of Brattleboro said he lives “fairly close to the project,” and is impressed with project and the campus. 

“We desperately need housing in the area,” he told the board Wednesday. “I’m very much in support of this project.”