Royalton
In response to Utah developer David R. Hall’s vision of an eco-friendly, sustainable city of thousands in the hills of Royalton, Sharon, Strafford and Tunbridge, community members will gather at 5 p.m. to voice their disapproval.
“This rally is the first public statement from the local people who David Hall is ignoring,” Randy Leavitt, one of the organizers, said over the phone Monday. “He has said to me, in particular at a public meeting over the phone, that ‘of course the local people don’t want this — local people don’t want change; they have to be educated first.’ I’m thinking that maybe he needs to be educated first.”
Leavitt, a Royalton resident, said he was a member of “Friends of the Four Corners,” a small group of planners, municipal officials and other citizens concerned about the development, known as a NewVista.
The group, which is small enough to fit in a living room, organized the protest and is just beginning to “stick its neck out” in public, he said.
Another demonstration is slated for this week near Hall’s home in Provo, Utah. Concerned residents of the Pleasant View neighborhood, an area where he has acquired several properties, oppose his plan to build a prototype NewVista community there and plan to meet for a protest on Thursday.
“We have a lot of people who feel very strongly about what the future (of the neighborhood) looks like,” neighborhood Chairman R. Paul Evans said Monday. “They’d like to see their dreams pursued, and are not happy that David Hall’s singular dream seems to be impacting all of us.”
Concerned residents in Utah and Vermont have been using social media to communicate from afar, trading information and strategizing across their Facebook pages. Hall has been active online, too, making appearances on the same pages to respond to his critics.
For his part, the wealthy developer cast his local critics as a vocal minority.
“The neighborhood chairman thinks that everyone is on his side, and that’s not true,” Hall said in a telephone interview on Monday.
The Utah protest will take place a few hundred feet from Hall’s house, and he said he had invited his neighbors to visit him there for more information about NewVista — and to come meet area residents who supported him.
Hall said his supporters were homeowners, who “feel (the protesters are) just driving down the price of their homes.”
He also emphasized that his plans were far from reaching fruition. Although he already has acquired about 30 percent of the 5,000 acres he covets in Vermont, the technology necessary to realize his vision could take decades to create, he said.
Evans also said his goal was to demonstrate that Hall faces significant opposition — not the support he claims. The neighborhood chairman said he had received supportive statements from Utah politicians at the local and state levels that he planned to read at the protest.
Soon after news broke, back in March, that Hall had been buying property in the White River valley, the developer made assurances that he would seek to convince the community that his plans had merit — and that, if he failed, he wouldn’t press the issue.
“If the people of Vermont can’t come to really love the concept, it’s not going to be done,” Hall said at the time. “And that’s OK. I’m OK with that. Developers shouldn’t be able to force things on people.”
On Monday, Hall described the protesters’ opposition to the NewVista model as a simple lack of understanding.
“Oh, absolutely, they want it to stay single-family homes, absolutely,” he said. “But they don’t understand that’s not sustainable for the next generation and the generation after that. It’s a cultural battle. Do we move away from single-family homes and more density and have that style of life, or do we stay with single-family homes?”
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or at 603-727-3242.
Correction
Utah developer David Hall has purchased about 1,500 acres — or 30 percent — of the 5,000 acres he hopes to acquire for his proposed NewVista community in Royalton, Sharon, Strafford and Tunbridge. An earlier version of this story understated how much property he has purchased.