How a Tiny Roadside Village is Reclaiming Its Streets

By Liz Schroeter Courtney

There was a time when North Hyde Park Village in Lamoille County was a bustling neighborhood with multiple general stores, each likely to have a roadside gasoline pump, a schoolhouse, a Grange Hall, and lumber mills along the Gihon River. But after the state widened and paved Route 100 in the 1960's, traffic began to move more readily through the village. Gone were the walking paths and many of the street trees that once lined the village center, and before long most of the businesses that served the neighborhood closed up too. 

This was ages ago, well before I moved to North Hyde Park with my family in 2016. As former city dwellers, we took some comfort in the village setting, the proximity of neighbors. But we deeply missed the ability to stroll out our front door and travel by foot, bike – or in the case of our children, stroller – without sharing the shoulder of the highway with rumbling semis and speeding drivers. 

Truth is, without the stores and school that once were in the village center, there was little reason for folks to walk around the neighborhood except to visit the post office. That is until the old Gihon Valley Hall needed a new roof. 

Reconnecting a Community

Right in the heart of North Hyde Park Village there’s a grand old three-story building, home to the Gihon Valley Grange from 1910 through 1994. It served the town as a meeting space for civil war vets, a hall for dances and concerts, and a stage for school recitals, but for many years it sat lightly used by the Hyde Park Historical Society. In 2019 the town of Hyde Park, which owns the building, agreed to replace the leaky roof on the old building, but the Gihon Valley Hall needed a new purpose. 

Here’s where I came in along with a half dozen other neighbors who saw the potential for the space to once again offer a gathering hub in the center of the village. As we worked to plan and execute repairs and events and use cases for the hall, we quickly realized how improving and activating the building could not only revitalize the neighborhood, but improving the infrastructure and involvement of the neighborhood could revitalize the hall in return. It all had to work together. We needed safer pathways to walk or bike to the hall. We needed better parking solutions for visitors. We needed visual cues to slow traffic. For the building to thrive, it needed to be part of a connected community.

It Takes A Village

Since that new roof went on much work has been done, and continues to move forward, to enliven North Hyde Park with the Gihon Valley Hall at the center. We are particularly proud of the partnership we’ve had with the Lamoille County Planning Commission (disclosure: I enjoyed this effort so much I joined their board) to explore ways to make our village more walkable and bicycle friendly. A municipal planning project led by LCPC recommended a variety of streetscaping measures ranging from natural – street trees, front yard landscaping – to structural – crosswalks, signs, sidewalks – to help slow traffic and improve pedestrian and bike mobility. 

The Gihon Valley Hall committee helped gather community member input for these ideas and make the case to test temporary versions of some of the concepts. Because Route 100 is a state highway, changing or testing things is a state matter and subject to the approval and cooperation of VTrans. As it turned out, when we finally got the a-ok from VTrans and the town’s highway crew (and a streak of warm and dry enough weather), our test of two temporary crosswalks across Route 100 was a first-of-its-kind collaboration!

Historic North Hyde Park

What We Learned

Why did this beta test get the green light? Rob Moore, Regional Transportation Planner at Lamoille County Planning Commission explained that the regional staff and community volunteers worked with VTrans staff to understand what would be feasible to test, eventually agreeing on temporary line striping, signage and the length of the test period. Rob noted that data seems to show an increase in pedestrian traffic related to community events and VT 100 vehicles speed seemed to slow down a little while the demonstration was in place.

Making the test a success was also a matter of municipal cooperation. With the funding support of VNRC’s Small Grants for Smart Growth, and the linkage of this project to recommendations from a recently completed State Municipal Planning Grant effort focusing on traffic in designated Village Centers, the Selectboard approved the additional funding needed to install the demonstration project.  The town work included significant time for the town highway crew to install the temporary crosswalk signs and complete the removal of the signs and line striping. Ron Rodjenski, Hyde Park Town Administrator, confirmed that these types of projects, especially with an engaged neighborhood, provide excellent information to town leaders deciding on public investment priorities that best support a more walkable and livable village.

Mostly what we learned as neighbors from the crosswalks project is the importance of getting a new perspective on the possibilities for our historic village. It got everyone involved to look at the neighborhood from the vantage point of someone walking their dog, someone riding their bike down from Montreal, someone trying to visit from elsewhere, someone trying to live in North Hyde Park village. We had to consider what matters to taxpayers, to commuters, to locals, to tourists. We even had to sit on our porches and count pedestrians and bicyclists! 

The data gathered from this pilot is just one piece of a larger effort to create placefulness in North Hyde Park and improve its value for everyone. Progress won’t happen at the speed of highway traffic, and that’s ok. It’s happening at a walking pace, but we have the pleasure along the way of getting to know our neighbors. 

_____

Liz Schroeter Courtney is a media and marketing professional specializing in sustainability who fell so in love with Vermont she got permission to work remotely so she could move here with her family in 2016. She’s the volunteer secretary of the Gihon Valley Hall Committee where she plans events, leads community engagement, and writes grants to restore the hall. She also serves on the board of the Lamoille County Planning Commission.