The town and village of Johnson on Tuesday announced they were entering into a partnership with Vermont State University to relocate town services onto the school’s campus in Johnson.
Essential town services like Johnson’s municipal offices, post office, and the town’s health center could move onto the university’s campus — which sits on higher ground, out of reach from the Lamoille and Gihon rivers’ floodplain, according to a joint announcement from officials with the town, village and university.
Johnson was hard hit by the July 2023 floods. The town offices, health center, post office and grocery store were all displaced, along with many homes and businesses in the area. The town in April this year moved its public library a half-mile through town and across the river — not far from the university’s Johnson campus.
The parties plan to apply for funding from a federal community development block grant for disaster recovery in response to the July 2023 floods, according to the announcement, which was posted on social media.
The project, if borne out, would transform the university’s Martinetti Hall into a Community Services and Resilience Center. While final details will still need to be worked out, officials said the arrangement could blend the roles of the university and the town in new ways.
“We have the opportunity to create something here that’s a new model for how college campuses or other facilities in their communities can more purposefully work together,” said David Bergh, the president of Vermont State University.
Tom Galinat, the town administrator for Johnson, said they were “facilitating, hopefully, a new arrangement that allows both of us to prosper and to grow into a more resilient community.”
“There’s this wonderful symbiosis where the needs are crossing at the same time,” he said. “It’s really exciting.”
Vermont State University is in its third year of an integrated statewide university system. The Vermont State Colleges System in 2021 merged Castleton University, Northern Vermont University and Vermont Technical College into a single institution.
Much of the institution’s building stock is not being used to its current and anticipated needs, Bergh said. Meanwhile, the university, like many small colleges and universities, has seen declining enrollment.
“Across the country, you have college campuses closing, merging, being shuttered,” Bergh said. “Our intent is to keep these campuses vibrant, but to find a way to do so where we’re reducing our operational footprint and expense, and to do so really thoughtfully, and to do so in ways with partners that connect to our mission.”
The parties in their announcement said the “flood-resilient and energy-efficient hub” could “strengthen the campus-community connection, a long-held community goal.”
The futures of the campus and the community are “inextricably intertwined,” Bergh said, and he envisioned the partnership would bring services to campus that could connect to academic programs. A health clinic, for example, could tie in with the university’s nursing program on campus, he said.
“For us to recruit students and employees who want to be there on a campus, they want to come to a place that has a vibrant community with active businesses,” he said. “And then for those businesses to be successful, they need, in part, for us to keep bringing people in the community.”
While both sides expressed optimism for the “one of a kind” partnership, they acknowledged they are still early in the process, and, in their announcement, said “there are hurdles to clear before determining how best to move forward.”
The university will host a forum at the school’s Stearns Hall Performance Space to discuss the partnership on Tuesday, Sept. 16. The final application for the grant is due Sept. 30, Galinat said.
