Bennington Downtown Area-Wide Plan
The Bennington Downtown Area-Wide Plan, prepared by Stone and our team members Greenman Pedersen, Kennedy Advisors, and Centerline Architects, responds to market opportunities and input by stakeholders and provides a vision for a vibrant downtown that is place where people can live, work, shop, visit and come together for community and social events.
The Town and Bennington County Regional Commission engaged in an area-wide planning process, which resulted in the creation of the Bennington Downtown Area-Wide Plan and Story Map. The Bennington Downtown Area-Wide Plan was a hybrid project utilizing the protocols from two successful programs in Vermont: a new brownfields program sponsored by the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) and the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development (ACCD), and the processes employed in eight communities as part of the Vermont Downtown Action Team (VDAT) disaster recovery project. The Plan provides a guide and vision for economic revitalization of vacant and underutilized sites, supported by information on - and an analysis of - environmental and market conditions. The Plan is intended to assist the economic development partners in identifying the opportunities and challenges presented by conditions in the downtown area. It also presents a vision for the redevelopment of a key cluster of parcels in the area, including implementation steps that will assist the Town and its partners realize a transformation in the area. Download the Bennington Downtown Area-Wide Plan to learn more!