PLAINFIELD – The long drama of Goddard College’s dissolution might have reached its final scene. On Thursday morning, a community group named the Greatwood Project announced that its bid for the Plainfield campus had been accepted by the school’s board of trustees.
The deal is worth $3.4 million, according to Kris Gruen, a founding member of the group, and heralds the possible end of a rocky, months-long sale process.
In early April, after years of financial difficulties, Goddard announced it was closing. In late May, the school’s trustees struck a deal to sell the campus to an unnamed buyer, setting off widespread criticism from Goddard’s students, alumni and faculty, and leading to a group filing for a temporary injunction to halt the sale. In early July, that deal fell through, and the trustees invited previously rejected buyers to once again bid for Goddard’s campus, name and trademarks.
According to Gruen, the school accepted the community group’s bid in the last two weeks, and the two parties have signed a sale agreement.
“We have a contract in place and we’re in a due diligence period now,” said Gruen, who is a Goddard alum.
Kenneth Macur, the school’s interim chief financial officer, confirmed in an email that Goddard has “a fully executed Purchase and Sale Agreement with Greatwood Project.”
The $3.4 million agreement matches the sale price in the first deal for Goddard’s campus. In its letter to previously rejected bidders, the college said that figure was the campus’ appraised value.
In that same letter, the school also maintained that any potential buyer had to be able to pay the full purchase amount “at closing with no financing contingencies.” Back in late May, Lucinda Garthwaite, another one of Greatwood Project’s founding members, and a former Goddard academic dean, told VTDigger that she had been “10 days away from making a cash offer of about $3.5 million” when the first deal was announced.
Nevertheless, Gruen said that currently “all options are still on the table as to how we approach final sale.” As to where the Greatwood Project was getting the money for the purchase, Gruen said that the group “is currently purchasing with funding derived solely from its founding board members.”
In addition to Garthwaite and Gruen, the other founding members of the group are Celina Barton, Susan Benninghoff, Brian Benninghoff, Eileen Doohan, Christopher Pratt and Leesa Stewart, according to a press release from the organization.
Stewart worked at Goddard for over five years, serving as the school’s chief financial and administrative officer until May 2023, according to her LinkedIn page. Pratt is a former member of Goddard’s board, according to his LinkedIn page.
Michelle Eddleman McCormick, the director of Cooperation Vermont, a local nonprofit focused on climate resilience that tried to purchase Goddard’s campus in both April and July, said the lack of transparency in negotiations was frustrating.
“This has all been done behind closed doors. This has been a process devoid of any community input,” said McCormick.
She continued: “No one in the community knows what the plan is, what the orientation is, why there hasn’t been community involvement, why [the Greatwood Project] declined to work with the existing community group.”
Cooperation Vermont would have preferred a cooperative model of ownership, according to McCormick.
According to Gruen, the Greatwood Project is made up of “half Goddard alums and half folks adjacent to the Goddard community.” Gruen said that the group is currently seeking official recognition as a nonprofit. In the meantime, it is operating as a project of Collective Well Foundation, a sustainability and climate-justice nonprofit.
Gruen said the group’s intention was to “preserve what Goddard has been and what it could be,” though he said the group could not “make any promises about anything right now” about specific plans.
“We would love to see the arts flourish, have affordable housing options manifest there, have learning programs there,” said Gruen.
Gruen said the Greatwood Project would work with the existing tenants of Goddard’s campus once the sale was completed. These include the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism, Maplehill School and WGDR Central Vermont Community Radio.
“We would love to have them stay. We haven’t strategized with those folks yet,” said Gruen.
According to the Greatwood Project’s press release, the group “anticipates completing the purchase this fall, pending regular real estate transaction processes.”
