Act 250 denies housing project

An Act 250 commission denied a major housing project in Hinesburg over flooding concerns.

The project, Hinesburg Center II, has been in the works for nearly a decade, and received approval from the town’s development review board in February 2023. Plans call for creating 21 new lots in the town’s village growth area off Route 116 near Patrick Brook and would include 73 new homes — 15 single family homes, two nine-unit buildings, one six-unit building and one 34-unit building.

Brett Grabowski, a developer with Milot Real Estate in Williston who co-owns the property with the David Lyman Revocable Trust, had proposed using fill to raise the elevation of the property above the current FEMA-based flood elevation to build structures on.

But the Vermont Natural Resources Board said there were still concerns about the project’s location on a floodplain. The project’s use of fill to elevate structures on the property “will cause an increase, and will contribute incrementally to an increase, in the horizontal extent and level of flood waters during peak flows up to and including the base flood discharge.”

“Placing the fill in the floodplain effectively cuts off the existing, lower elevation areas that provide floodwater storage and conveyance while subsequently raising the water surface elevations adjacent to the project during times of flooding,” wrote Thomas Little, the chair of the Act 250 District 4 Commission.

The project is the third iteration of continued commercial and residential development in Hinesburg’s village area. The first two phases included the Creekside Project and Hinesburg Center I, which brought Kinney Drugs, the Parkside Cafe and other housing units to town several years ago.

The Act 250 commission took specific concern with future property owners on the property tract. Little in the denial said that “the current owner is accepting increased flood risk for subsequent owners who are not part of this process, hence the whole development becomes (flood-prone) adjacent landowners.”

Grabowski, the principal developer on the project, disagreed with the ruling, and said that the specific policy by which the project was denied was arbitrary.

“They will argue that they are applying this policy to all applications, but in essence, that is kind of the problem,” he said. “A project that is potentially proposed for a floodplain, say, in the Winooski River is not the same impact as a project proposed for the floodplain of the Patrick Brook.”

He added: “It’s very much, we feel, an apples and oranges type of situation, but they are applying the same standard to all applications, and which we don’t feel is appropriate.”

Grabowski said they have not made any decisions yet on how they’ll proceed. There is a 30-day window to appeal from the March 27 denial.

While the town of Hinesburg is an interested party and could appeal the decision, Alex Weinhagen, the town’s director of planning and zoning, said there are no plans to do so.

The denial adds some concern for the town. Hinesburg’s village area, 40 square miles of land off Route 116 wedged between the LaPlatte River and Patrick Brook, has for decades been targeted by the town for new housing and commercial growth.

Those plans are quickly coming to fruition, and town officials have banked on the more than 300-unts of housing development, as well as the added commercial development, to inject badly needed tax revenue into town coffers.

Only 8 percent of the town’s tax base comes from commercial and industrial, leaving the rest for residential taxpayers, who have been shouldering an increasing cost for services that other towns Hinesburg’s size do not have.

To try and increase tax revenue, the town has pursued a path of development in its village district. But concerns over this strategy have mounted in recent years, given the village area’s proximity to the Patrick Brook floodplain.

In a recent survey, town residents cited water and flooding issues as one of the top challenges facing the town. Those concerns have likely been influenced by the damage wrought by July’s flooding in places like Montpelier. Hinesburg was largely spared any major damage, but a portion of the town’s village area was very briefly underwater.

Grabowski said these flooding concerns may have influenced the state in their denial of the project.

“I’ll be really honest with you, yes, it is a very politically charged topic, you can’t deny that,” he said. “I think that this project is suffering because of it.”

Officials with the Natural Resources Board were not immediately available for comment but said previously in documents that the effects of climate change and more intense rainstorms may lead to greater flooding at sites that may not yet be captured in current FEMA hydraulic modeling.

“While we understand the critical need for more housing in our state, it does not seem prudent to be constructing new affordable or (any) housing in an area vulnerable to flooding, putting potentially unknowing members of the public at future risk and displacement,” Kyle Medash, a floodplain manager with Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources, said in previous documents.

Previous phases of the development, including Hinesburg Center I, were “pretty thoroughly vetted” at the time, Weinhagen said.

“The developer had some very sophisticated hydrological modeling done by a very reputable firm, that the town has used in the past as well, and the state provided feedback, but they didn’t have the same level of concern that they’ve expressed with this project,” he said.