PLAINFIELD – The third potential buyer of the Goddard College campus in as many months stepped in after the previous two sales fell through. Mike Davidson asked the select board to give him time on the agenda at the October 14 regular meeting.
He joined the select board at the Plainfield Opera House with Tim Sidore, his chief of staff, to offer his thoughts about the future of the now-mostly-empty campus, asking for input from the town.
Davidson, the owner of Execusuite, based in Lebanon, N.H., agreed to a $3.4 million purchase price for the property that stopped operating as a school last spring. The deal is scheduled to close in late November, he said.
“Seven Days” reported that Karen Hatcher, who volunteers as Plainfield’s grants administrator, “said she’d looked into some of Davidson’s real estate holdings and was encouraged by his work converting historic buildings into studio apartments.
‘He knows how to do that, and it could come online pretty quickly,’ she said.”
Davidson is the only buyer to have reached out to the town and attended a select board meeting. He told the board he’d heard about the sale two weeks ago and had not yet developed plans for the campus, sharing his hope that the ethos of Goddard can be maintained.
Losing Goddard College is a substantial loss for the town, he acknowledged, then offered some of his ideas for the future. He said plans could include housing, arts, food and wilderness.
“We’re blessed to already have the chip plant,” Davidson said. “You’ve got heat piped around the campus. It’s a brilliant, efficient heating system,” “Seven Days” reported. He expressed interest in geothermal and solar energy as part of the property’s future.
“There is a campus where we can paint a bigger picture,” adding that he hoped the ethos of Goddard can be maintained.
While sharing his many ideas, he noted he has no capacity to take on all of the many niche areas within the scope of what might happen on the former campus. The success of the project will require having the right people come forward to breathe life into the component pieces, he said.
Minutes of the meeting indicated “there was discussion about how large a population the town could support, exploring the idea the population could potentially increase to 1,500 or 1,600 residents.” Plainfield’s population in the 2020 census was roughly 1,200 people and is now estimated to be just shy of 1,250.
file photo by Glenn Russell, VTDigger
Paul Fixx is editor of The Hardwick Gazette and lives in Hardwick.
