By Erin Petenko for VTDigger
For roughly 22 months, the former site of the Montpelier Post Office has sat vacant, a lonely looming presence at the corner of State and Elm streets.
The building sustained significant damage from the July 2023 flood, when water inundated the streets of Vermont’s capital. It was so hastily vacated that federal employees’ items are still sitting on their desks, creating an “eerie” feeling, according to Jon Copans, executive director of the Montpelier Commission for Recovery and Resilience.
Now, the city and state are considering whether it may be worth buying the property at 87 State Street from its owner, the U.S. General Services Administration.
“If you think about the location of this particular building and piece of land, it really does represent a transformative opportunity for our city in terms of what comes next,” Copans said.
The commission, a private/public partnership between Montpelier Foundation, Montpelier Alive, and the city itself that was developed in the wake of the July 2023 flood, has been working to lead a discussion about the potential uses of the property — including housing, parking, businesses, state offices, and more.
The General Services Administration announced it would begin the disposition process in December 2024. On April 21, it sent a letter to Montpelier and the state of Vermont about the possibility of a negotiated sale, similar to a “right of first refusal” for government actors before it becomes available to the general public, Copans said.
Since then, the commission has been coordinating a collaborative discussion between Montpelier, the General Services Administration, and the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development to determine whether this property could be a good fit for Montpelier’s needs.
Many questions remain. Copans wouldn’t even put a ballpark estimate on the sale price of the property since there hasn’t been an appraisal on it post-flooding. In the 2024 Grand List, it was valued at $7.8 million.
Asked about the current condition of the building, Paul Hughes, a spokesperson for the General Services Administration, said via email that it has been “stabilized.”
He wrote that the General Services Administration decided to dispose of the property “after it was deemed a high financial and operational risk.” Montpelier’s post office has since moved into the Montpelier City Center at the corner of State and Main streets.
Copans said there was a “gargantuan” amount of water in the basement of the former post office, but “my understanding is they have done a lot of work.” Local rumors have circulated about problems with the building’s foundation, but Copans said the General Services Administration has reassured the commission that it’s still solid.
It’s also unclear if the building may come with a historic covenant to preserve its appearance since it’s a part of Montpelier’s historic downtown. Copans said many people find its Brutalist style not “particularly pleasing,” but nonetheless, its historic status is one issue that would need to be addressed in order for Montpelier to get a sense of the value of the building.
The 70,000-square-foot building, built in 1964, hosted the post office’s retail space on the first floor with room for postal activity in the back. The second and third floors had office space for federal agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. senators’ local headquarters.
When it comes to how the city could make use of the building, Copans said housing was at the forefront of everyone’s mind. Montpelier has faced a housing shortage that only worsened after the 2023 flood.
The property also comes with a large parking lot that could be developed into multilevel parking, Copans said. That could ease the need for parking on the other side of State Street, where riverside parking lots are exacerbating flood risk.
“We don’t believe that’s the highest and best use for that riverfront property,” he said. “A, it is ugly, and B, it’s really not great when it comes to flood resilience to have a bunch of impervious surface right next to the river.”
Lindsay Kurrle, secretary of the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, said the state has a “shared interest” in building resilient communities and developing housing for workers across the state.
“This has presented an opportunity for everyone to kind of lean in and take a look at this building and see how it could be redeveloped,” Kurrle said.
The state has no obligation to actually take ownership, Kurrle said — but it’s facilitating the opportunity to do an assessment of the sale. There’s no risk involved at this point, she said, since the parties are just expressing interest.
The Montpelier city manager’s office, the city spokesperson, and the mayor did not respond to interview requests.
This story was republished with permission from VTDigger, which offers its reporting at no cost to local news organizations through its Community News Sharing Project. To support this work, please visit vtdigger.org/donate.
