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BELLOWS FALLS â After months of on-again, off-again discussion, the town of Rockingham and the village of Bellows Falls have told the Vermont Agency of Transportation âno thanksâ to its driverless car experiment.
The automatic car project would have allowed a private company to come in and use local roads to test the vehicles.
In Vermont, only the town of Springfield has signed up for the experiment, and now with the Rockingham-Bellows Falls rejection, only the town of Alburgh has expressed interest, state officials said.
During one of their regular joint meetings this week, the Rockingham Select Board and Bellows Falls Village Board of Trustees failed to even muster a motion on the issue, with Agency of Transportation officials watching via Zoom.
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BELLOWS FALLS â The Windham Windsor Housing Trust on Thursday revealed its revised plans for the old Bellows Falls Garage, saying it had listened to the public about its concerns.
The 27-unit project last month had undergone a substantial revision from its original plans, and the housing trust now plans on demolishing all but the historic Rockingham Street facade and building a new timber frame structure behind it. The housing trust has made additional revisions in response to public comments, said Elizabeth Bridgewater, the executive director of the housing trust.
The costs of rehabilitating the 100-year-old concrete structure were too great, and were the reason behind the substantial revision, Bridgewater said.
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BELLOWS FALLS The Windham-Windsor Housing Trust Monday said it was significantly changing its project using the former Bellows Falls Garage because of the high cost of restoring the 1920 concrete structure.
Elizabeth Bridgewater, the executive director of the Brattleboro-based non-profit, said the housing group was facing a $3 million gap in its anticipated costs and the construction bids on the project, which was supposed to start construction in November.
The $3 million would have been on top of the estimated costs of $9.1 million, Bridgewater said in a follow-up interview. The extra costs only became clear after construction bids were received, she said. The new plan is expected to cost $9.9 million for the 27-unit project. Construction is expected to start in April.