Barre Locals Oppose Purchase of Vacant Downtown Building

A group of Barre City residents, frustrated at a city council decision to help a local business group buy a derelict building, has filed an open meetings complaint in an effort to stop the transaction.

At issue is 143 Main Street, in Barre’s historic shopping district. Owned by Florida landlord Jeff Jacobs, the structure has been empty since 2010. The Barre Area Development Corporation wants to buy the building for $1 million in order to get its two adjacent downtown storefronts back into circulation again.

On December 30, the Barre City Council agreed to grant the group $400,000 to help make that happen and gave it six months to raise the other $600,000 needed for the purchase. The $400,000 will come from Barre’s share of American Rescue Plan Act dollars it received during the pandemic. Barre, often called Barre City to distinguish it from neighboring Barre Town, has about 8,500 people and annual budget of about $12 million.

Supporters of the proposal say replacing the building will improve the look of the city’s 19th-century Main Street.

“That building is a freaking eyesore,” said Jeffrey Tuper-Giles, who co-owns the nearby Reynolds House bed-and-breakfast. “I hate it.”

Critics say the money would be better spent helping people whose homes were damaged by flooding in July. Barre City resident Ed Stanak, who signed the open meetings complaint, said some of his neighbors have struggled to replace heating systems that were ruined when their homes were inundated.

“The city couldn’t figure out how to help these people out financially,” Stanak said. “And now we’re going to shovel $400,000 of ARPA money into the pockets of a millionaire landlord? That’s insanity.”

Steve Mackenzie, vice president of BADC’s board, said his group isn’t happy, either, about paying so much for a building that will likely need to be torn down. He said the city has asked Jacobs for years to fix up the structure, which most recently held a Family Dollar, and BADC has tried to buy it in the past.

Jacobs did not respond to a request for comment.

Sometime in the past few years, Mackenzie said, Jacobs — a major property owner in Montpelier — had the building listed at $1.4 million. With Barre working to spruce up its downtown, and an agreement to sell for $1 million, it was time to act, Mackenzie said.

“We’ve been talking about this for 15 years, and nobody has done anything,” he said.

The open meetings complaint, sent on Tuesday, claims that the city failed to properly warn the December 30 meeting where city councilors voted 4-3 to approve the purchase. The council has seven members, though Teddy Waszazak has stepped down to take his seat as a newly elected member of the legislature. Waszazak first resigned on December 17 but briefly rejoined to vote to sell the building.

City Manager Nicolas Storellicastro responded to the complaint on Wednesday by saying critics of the plan lost in a fair vote. The matter is on the city council’s agenda for its next meeting on January 14.

“Every dollar spent on lawyers to placate these bruised egos who wish to overturn a valid vote is one dollar less spent on repairing potholes and providing services to residents,” Storellicastro wrote in an email.

People on both sides agree that a long-standing ideological conflict, not the circumstances of the vote, is at least partly behind the complaints.

“There’s a clicque-y little network that I think, frankly, has other reasons for opposing this,” said Mackenzie, citing opponents of polarizing Mayor Thom Lauzon, who won election in May. Those opponents are sharply critical of BADC, noting that the group doesn’t have a plan for the site yet.

While candidates for local races in Barre don’t declare a party, the two sides can be roughly divided into political camps.

Stanak said his opposition is based on the fact that the city didn’t warn the meeting properly, but that others who signed the complaint are foes of Lauzon who see BADC and Lauzon as Republican allies. Mackenzie and Lauzon have known each other since the 1970s.

“Some people view Thom Lauzon as the banner carrier for the Republicans and everything Republicans stand for in people’s minds: real estate interests, profit taking, etc.,” Stanak, a Progressive, said on Wednesday.

Lauzon could not be reached for comment. But Mackenzie, a former city councilor and city manager who described his group and himself as apolitical, said, “It’s just a lot of crap, to tell you the truth.

“National politics has come to the local community,” he said.

Tuper-Giles described the conflict as “100 percent political.” On Tuesday, he had a sandwich at AR Market, a pricey specialty grocery store and deli next door to the vacant building, which is divided into two storefronts. Later, Tuper-Giles peered through the dusty windows and said he’d like to see affordable housing built there, or an indoor farmers market.

“There is a group of people, mostly the Progressives I would say, some of the Dems, who no matter what Thom Lauzon and the Republicans do, they’re going to argue and fight and say it’s not a good idea,” said Tuper-Giles, describing himself as an independent.

Ellen Kaye, one of those against the building purchase, disagreed, saying she would have opposed the BADC plan even if Lauzon’s predecessor, whom she supported, had proposed it.

“I don’t think a millionaire derelict property owner deserves a fundraising effort to pay them off to the tune of $1 million,” Kaye said. “I am categorically opposed to giving public money to private hands.”

Kaye and others who signed the complaint don’t have a plan for the building. Kaye wants the city to nullify its December 30 decision and to try to claim the building through eminent domain — an option Barre officials explored and rejected in the past — and to hold a public process to determine the best use of the space.

Stanak agrees with BADC that the buildings need to go, but he, too, wants to see the group’s plan. He cited the large vacant lot in Newport that was created when an apartment building was demolished in 2015.

“I do not want this to happen in a haphazard fashion,” Stanak said. “People have good intentions, and then you wind up with a hole downtown for the next decade.”