A statewide effort under the new guidelines of Act 181 has kicked off that has major implications for how Vermonters will be able to plan and strategize for smart growth and conservation in the future. This 2024 bill that was passed as an update to the longstanding Act 250—Vermont’s land use development law—is intended to enhance opportunities to sustainably develop densified zones while preserving vulnerable ecological areas. 

Kathy Beyer, Senior Vice-President of Real Estate Development at Evernorth, a New England-based nonprofit that works to raise funds, connect partners and develop housing options for low-income residents of Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire, has her finger on the pulse of legislation that directly affects the process of planning and realizing housing projects here in the Green Mountain State. To hear more about the impact that Act 181 may have on affordable housing projects and how some developers are viewing this new set of guidelines, we caught up with Beyer. Here’s what she had to say. 

Beyer on what hurdles have existed for smart growth development in Vermont: 

Evernorth has a long history of projects that I think most people would agree fall under the definition of smart growth. Many of our projects are in our downtowns, village centers or neighborhood development areas. And really, the biggest hurdle is the difficulty of developing on what are often what we call “tight infill” sites. These are when your contractor or your architect doesn’t have a lot of room to design the building, construct the building, and things get more complicated. We have a project under construction in downtown Burlington called Post Apartments. As we started working on that parcel, we learned that it’s probably still on top of a one-hundred-year-old brick sewer owned by the city. It’s buried about 20 or 30 feet deep and runs right through that parcel. You can’t build on top of it, so we had to work on a very complex plan around decommissioning that sewer line. And then lo and behold, we were working on another downtown parcel in St. Johnsbury, and it also has a brick sewer line running below it. 

These are examples of some hurdles to our smart growth development. Taylor Street in Montpelier is considered a shining example of smart growth because it includes the multimodal transportation center. But that parcel had considerable brownfield contamination, it had considerable legal issues, and many historic uses on the site. It took a lot of time and effort to resolve those legal issues. Technically at the time we were working on that project, it was sitting within the one-hundred-year floodplain. What we did, because Montpelier had smartly adopted flood hazard regulations, is that we were able to raise the site in construction, raise what we call the finished floor elevation, so that now you walk into our housing lobby and it’s above the one-hundred-year floodplain level. We have a great photo of the horrific flooding in downtown Montpelier in July, 2023, and amazingly, Taylor Street is so close to the river and our housing lobby didn’t flood. 

Beyer on possible benefits of Act 181 implementation: 

I think the tiers really are finally similar to the original concept of Act 250, where we were going to have a statewide land use plan. What I’m excited about is that Act 181 is saying, “Hey, in a positive fashion, this is where we want you to build.” Not just Evernorth, but other developers as well are like, “We’ve gone through a public process, we’ve talked with the communities, we’ve talked with the regional Planning Commissions (RPCs), this is a Tier 1A area, this is a Tier 1B area, and if we focus your development in these areas, the path is going to be easier.” And then Act 181 also says, “And oh, by the way, there are some areas where we don’t want it to be easy to develop. Based on the process used for establishing the Tiers, these are areas where it’s going to be more difficult.” And that’s exactly what we should be doing, because without Act 250, we really operated on a project-by-project basis around land use planning, and that’s not the way to do land use planning. Full disclosure, I was on the steering committee when we started this discussion before Act 181 got to the legislature. If you look back over how many studies have been done on Act 250, including the very comprehensive one done on the 50th anniversary, it’s been laying the foundation for Act 181 for at least 10 or 15 years.

Beyer on how Act 181 may affect approaching Vermont communities for prospective projects: 

It has been wonderful to see how many communities are inviting us in to build housing. The awareness around the need, the desire to see more housing in their communities, to see growth in their population, it’s something that didn’t exist pre-pandemic. If it’s done in a thoughtful way, it’s great. I also don’t think the housing crisis should be used as a way to bash environmental laws. I think there’s a balance there that Vermont, by and large, does a pretty good job of getting right. 

But I just happened to be looking at a report of the Vermont Futures project where they did a survey asking the question, “Are you supportive of more housing?” And the question was asked in three ways: “Do you want more housing for the state of Vermont?” And 60% said yes. Then they asked, “Do you want more housing in your town?” And 57% said yes. And then they asked, “Do you want more housing for your neighborhood? And it dropped to 46%. And I think nimbyism is often more project specific or neighborhood specific.

Quite frankly, you still need to get your local zoning permit. There’s still going to be an avenue to exercise your rights if you aren’t happy with the project that’s been proposed. Maybe I’m too much of a pessimist, but I don’t see how the Tiers will advance much on the Nimbyism side of things. I tell people that while I’m a nonprofit real estate developer, I am still a real estate developer with years of experience. And I think Nimbyism unfortunately often comes from a place of fear and scarcity. People don’t want to see the change to a parcel of land that’s been vacant for many, many years. And I honestly don’t know how you get around that. 

Beyer on how Act 181’s conservation components may fit with the state’s efforts to increase housing access while conserving fragile ecosystems: 

The two goals of housing and conservation have to support each other, and it’s been a longstanding belief of mine that every community needs to answer the following questions at the same time: where should we conserve our land and where should people live? And by answering those questions at the same time, not separately, then you’re asking, “What do you want your community to look like? Where are people going to live? Where are we going to conserve farmland or natural areas?” You’re talking about the whole ecosystem. And I actually think that’s one of the beauties of the Tier system. It says, “Okay, let’s, let’s have this discussion at the same time as we go through the process of establishing the tiers.” So I find that to be one of the beauties of the approach and I think it will have a very positive outcome.