Scooter MacMillan | Staff Writer
During an April 22 meeting of the stateâs council for historic preservation, a motion was unanimously passed to create a new âShelburne Shipyard Historic District.â
The size of the district, which could include the shipyard and nearby homes, is still unknown. It will be the townâs third of its kind.
State architectural historian Devin Colman said the advisory council staff decided the shipyard should stay on Vermontâs list of historic places, too, after a review was triggered by a review of the site from owner Safe Harbor Marinas.
Safe Harbor purchased the shipyard in 2019 and hired historic preservation consultant Scott Newman to survey the site in case the company wants to make renovations to improve its operation, according to Newmanâs survey reporting.
On March 8, Shelburneâs director of planning and zoning Dean Pierce received an email from the state advisory council on historic preservation asking for information about the Safe Harbor Shelburne Shipyard Marina.
âWe are reaching out to ask if you have any pertinent information about the history and/or significance of this property,â the email said. And it asked for the information to be sent by March 15 for a meeting three days later.
Now locals are worried that the shipyard, possibly the oldest continuously operating of its kind in the country, could lose its historic status.
Shelburneâs historic preservation and design review commission chair Fritz Horton said he was alarmed by the request and upset that so little time was given to gather information.
Devin Colman in front of his favorite midcentury house in Burlington On January 24, the preservation experts of seven northeastern states, including Pennsylvania and New York, convened for a webinar on historic barns, hosted by the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance. One of the three invited guest speakers was Tom Visser, professor and director of the master s of science program in historic preservation at the University of Vermont. In the subsequent breakout session for Vermont, the main speakers, Vermont state architectural historian Devin Colman and Preservation Trust of Vermont field service representative Alex Tolstoi, greeted each other familiarly. Both graduates of Visser s program, they gave a shout-out to a third grad, Caitlin Corkins, tax credits and grants coordinator at the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation, who didn t make it to the event.
Seven Days seems fairly straightforward: An old Vermont farmhouse, circa 1840, is available in Shelburne for near-immediate occupancy. It s a one-and-a-half-story, L-shaped farmhouse with wooden siding, a stone foundation, and a newer porch and addition that could be removed by the new owner. Asking price: free for the taking, provided you take it somewhere else. One might assume that a free house would move quickly, given how Vermont s residential real estate market has boomed since the start of the pandemic. According to the Vermont Association of Realtors, the average sales price for a single-family home in January 2021 was $314,949 more than 14 percent higher than in January 2020. But that early 2021 average reflected a slight cooling of the housing market since late last fall. In November, the average sales price for a single-family home was $352,537, more than 26 percent higher than the year before.