In 2007, our family stood on Main Street and watched the Colby Block burn. The fire came close enough to Chapman’s General, in our family for more than 150 years, that we feared we would lose it too. Chapman’s survived. Seven businesses and three apartments did not.
Over the following decade, the center of Fairlee hollowed out. The gas station next door sat abandoned for more than 15 years. The bank building went vacant. The Gryphon Building, across from Town Hall, neared condemnation. Chapman’s came close to insolvency. When one building in a village falls, its neighbors feel it.
Fairlee refused to accept that. Residents wrote a Town Plan calling for revitalization of the Colby Block and more village housing. Volunteers led the Main Street to Morey effort. The Planning Commission, Development Review Board, Water Commission, Selectboard and town staff have put in countless hours making new investment possible. None of what follows happens without them.
Building on that work, our families and partners have invested more than $5 million in Fairlee over seven years, with millions more in state support for these designated priority projects. We rebuilt the Gryphon Building. Our cousin Jonah Richard restored the bank building. With our partner Deecie Denison, we revived the old gas station. Today two women-owned businesses, Sunnyside Coffee and Ninny Goat, thrive on Main Street, Chapman’s has added Chapman’s Provisions, and there are more than a dozen new jobs and over 20 units of workforce housing.
The Colby Block lot is the missing piece. After we bought it in 2021, neighbors crowdfunded more than $10,000 to plant trees, and together we turned it into Chapman’s Place, home to many concerts and community events since. Now we’re ready for the next step: the Denison, two three-story buildings with shops and restaurants on the ground floor and 22 year-round apartments above, rebuilding what the fire took. Its design won unanimous Development Review Board approval after two public hearings, and the state awarded a planning grant to support it as a priority project.
Picture what it adds: About 15 full-time jobs in new cafés, eateries and shops. Residents who will buy coffee, groceries and dinner on Main Street in February, not just July. More than $1 million a year in local spending, new sidewalks and a pocket park. A downtown where you can run errands and meet a friend, and where existing businesses have the steady customers they need to last.
We read the Valley News coverage of the recent Fairlee Selectboard meeting (Oct. 20) with some sadness. We don’t see neighbors standing in the way. We see people who love Fairlee and worry about taxes, fire protection and the character of their town. We share those concerns. Many in that room are family, friends and longtime customers. This is a disagreement among people who all want the best for Fairlee.
So it’s worth being clear about the Community and Housing Infrastructure Program, or CHIP. It is not a grant or a tax break. The Denison will pay its full property tax bill every year, and the taxes the empty lot pays today keep going to the town. For up to 20 years, a share of the new tax growth the building creates repays a loan for roughly $550,000 in septic infrastructure, a cost construction lenders will not carry. About two-thirds comes from the state education tax, not Fairlee’s municipal tax. There is no town debt, no bond vote and no tax rate increase. Once the loan is repaid, roughly $79,000 a year in new tax goes to the town and our schools.
Between the Denison and Jonah Richard’s Bridge + Main project, more than $10 million in new investment is ready for Fairlee, and CHIP gives the town a roadmap for future village infrastructure. The town has done the hard work to get here. Let’s keep that momentum going together, and please speak up in support of moving forward with CHIP.
Our family was there the day Fairlee lost the Colby Block. We’d love to be there, with all our neighbors, the day it comes back.
Travis Noyes and Barrett Brown are fourth-generation owners of Chapman’s General in Fairlee and partners in Appleseed Development, which is developing the Denison.