The greater Craftsbury community is weighing potential uses for the Sterling College campus once the school closes its doors to students this summer. Headwaters Community Trust, founded in 2024, announced in a recent newsletter it is exploring the acquisition of the campus. “It is one of th ose generational opportunities,” said Linda Ramsdell, president of the community land trust’s board of directors. “It’s really big and we’re a really young, new land trust and we feel we have to consider all the possibilities and fully explore and pursue the acquisition, because it’s sort of what a land trust was made for.” READ MORE Headwaters primarily serves the towns of Albany, Craftsbury, Glover and Greensboro — the “headwaters” of the Black, Barton and Lamoille rivers — and resulted from community discussions regarding the severe housing crisis in the area. According to Ramsdell, the land trust spent its first full year “putting the ‘community’ in ‘community trust’”: reaching out and listening to community members, hosting speakers and building relationships. When Sterling College announced its closure in November, people began looking to Headwaters as a potential solution for the campus’s future, she said. Sterling College consists of 166 acres in Craftsbury Common, which includes 12 “primary buildings” totalling around 65,000 square feet and 16 “outbuildings” totaling approximately 20,000 square feet. The 68-year-old institution currently has 110 dormitory beds, as well as classrooms, offices, a library, a dining hall, farm and forestry infrastructure, athletic fields and trail networks. It is also located near Craftsbury’s high school and the town library. “The community land trust is definitely a model that’s ideally suited to hold all of the hopes and possibilities people want for that campus in the future, whether it’s some combination of education or commercial or housing,” Ramsdell said. In the community land trust model, the trust acquires and maintains ownership of land, selling the houses on it at an affordable price. If homeowners decide to sell, they do so per an established resale formula to keep the housing affordable in perpetuity. Such trusts, governed by a board made up of residents and community members, can also serve as the long-term stewards for other community assets. Carey Crozier, a Headwaters board member, detailed the trust’s efforts to explore an acquisition of Sterling to legislators during NEK Day at the Statehouse at the end of January. “This is the first time in probably the 10 years that I’ve been renting in the area that I feel like we’re actually getting somewhere, after so many conversations and so many initiatives,” she said. Scott Thomas, president of Sterling College, said in an email last week that the institution is also encouraged by the community-centered exploration underway with both Headwaters and Craftsbury Saplings, a child care center. Farm fields at Sterling College. Photo courtesy of Sterling College “Headwaters’ Community Land Trust model offers an innovative framework to help ensure continued alignment between the campus and the needs and values of the community as Sterling concludes its degree-granting programs,” Thomas said. “We see this as a meaningful opportunity to expand childcare and establish permanent affordable housing in Craftsbury while potentially maintaining a thread of educational and ecological programming that has defined Sterling over the decades.” “Of course, discussions with Headwaters remain exploratory, and any transaction would require review and approval by Sterling’s Board of Trustees,” he added. Craftsbury Saplings, which currently operates in the East Craftsbury Presbyterian Church, is looking to renovate a dormitory at Sterling College to expand its programming if Headwaters acquires the property. Initially, the child care center planned to expand at its current location but has shifted gears due to rising costs and changes in funding. According to Melissa Jacobs, Saplings’ executive director, the center serves around 19 children daily and plans to increase enrollment to 42 children and offer infant care for the first time once the expansion is complete. The organization has raised around $885,000 from donors and foundations for the expansion, as well as $2 million in federal funds. READ MORE ”We believe this site offers cost savings for Saplings while bringing our town’s educational resources closer together for collaboration and rich community-based and accessible programming,” Jacobs said in an email, adding that, if all goes well, Saplings hopes to move forward with renovations by late summer. A number of other organizations and people are helping Sterling College and Headwaters evaluate how to move forward. Over the last couple of months, Sterling has begun an external process through the Preservation Trust of Vermont to “help surface and test viable, mission-aligned possibilities for the campus” and identify a successor entity or entities. If Headwaters does acquire the campus, it hopes to have the time for a “robust, holistic and transparent planning process that respects the Sterling College legacy and includes neighbors, area organizations, local businesses and other potential partners,” the trust explained in the January newsletter. According to Ramsdell, the college’s faculty are very interested in continuing some sort of educational or other programming there. “No matter what comes of it, exploring this opportunity is a great exercise for us,” Ramsdell said. “On the one hand, it’s way more than we’d ever imagined at this point, and on the other hand — especially with people looking to us for a good outcome for a really difficult moment in our community — it’s our responsibility and also our privilege to explore that.” Read the story on VTDigger here: Community land trust exploring the acquisition of Sterling College campus. ...read more read less