Vermont Housing Conservation Board 2005 - Vermont Housing and ...

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OTTER VIEW PARK, MIDDLEBURY
At Otter View Park, the view across a meadow looking towards Weybridge
takes in the steeple of a church in Middlebury. The Otter Creek runs below.
LOCAL PARK PROJECT IS A “ WIN-WIN-WIN”
With Habitat, Housing & Recreation
short walk down from Middlebury College, or up from the town’s popular
A business district, is an appealing little parcel of open land on a corner in a
residential neighborhood. This 17-acre meadow slopes down to a wetland that is
rich with bird life, and ends at a finger of solid ground along the Otter Creek.
Several years ago, members of the Middlebury Area Land Trust (MALT)
decided that this property, which the college owned and had not developed, had
the potential to become a public park and watershed protection demonstration
site. Otter View Park was envisioned with its grassy land kept open and with
wheelchair-accessible trails to a boardwalk installed across the marsh, out to a
new viewing platform beside the river. A park like that, they foresaw, could be
appreciated by neighbors, townspeople, college students, seniors, and young
people from area schools who could come to learn.
“The property offers such fabulous views, and habitat along the river, that we
took the first step and went to Middlebury College,” recalls Bill Roper, a MALT
member who chairs its Otter View project advisory committee. “We asked if
they would be interested in selling it before it got development pressure.”
The college agreed, stipulating that at least two residential lots would be
created, and granted MALT a couple of years to raise the funds that the project
would require — which turned out to be about 850,000 — and to get the
approvals it would need. Those included five different subdivision permits (the
parcel lies astride the Middlebury-Weybridge town line), all now in place.
As MALT put its ideas before the
public in several open forums, says
Roper, more than one person pointed
out “that this parcel is in some ways an
infill property, and we shouldn’t lose
the housing component,” says Roper.
In response, MALT put three
housing lots onto its plans for the
property. Using VHCB funds, one
lot will be developed by Habitat for
Humanity, while the other two, tucked
behind existing homes, have been
sold at market rate to help pay for the
project.
“That’s been an important source
of income for the project,” says Warren
King, a former chair of the Otter Creek
Audubon Society who has co-chaired
this project’s fundraising committee.
“This is a big project, financially, for
MALT.”
Trails along the property will be
handicapped-accessible, meeting
an identified need in the local
recreation plan, notes MALT President
Christopher Bray. And because the
parcel drains a sizable spread of land
above it, a planned detention pond, to
be cleaned out periodically, will retain
much of the silt that is now filling in
the wetland below.
All in all, the project is putting an
array of desirable outcomes into one
compact package. Its success should
help to build area support for future
conservation efforts, notes Gary Starr,
a neighbor and well-known bird artist
who co-chairs the fundraising effort
with his wife, Kathy, and with Warren
King.
“It’s a great project — and we’ve
gotten a good diversity of neighbors
involved in it,” Starr says.
“The project took some twists and
turns,” adds Roper. “But we feel the
outcome is a model that we can be
proud of.”