Vermont Tasting Room Will Offer Green Mountain Goods

By Andy McKeeveriBerkshires Staff
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John Armstrong and Peter Hopkins are two principals in Hoppy Valley Organics. The new company is opening a tasting and retail center in the Hillside House.

POWNAL, Vt. — A 1,300 square-foot section of the Hillside House is being transformed into a tasting center for beer, wine, cheese and other specialty products — all made in Vermont.

"The Vermont brand is so powerful and compelling now," said Peter Hopkins, who is one of five businessmen heading the venture. "The whole focus of this is on Vermont food and beverage."

The Green Mountain Tasting Center — just some 400 yards from the Massachusetts border — is the next project from Hoppy Valley Organics, which started just a year ago growing hops along Route 7. The hops will provide the organic ingredient for breweries.

The group of business owners then considered opening a tasting center. Armstrong owns the Hillside House, a furniture store with a small gift shop inside, and they ultimately decided to revamp the gift shop area with a C-shaped bar, eight beer taps, three coolers and seating for up to eight people.

"We actually started talking about putting a building up on the hop yard itself and have the microbreweries bring tastings there," Armstrong said.

The gift shop will sell an array of products including those offered at the tastings. The group has been traveling the state to find small companies and farms making cheeses, spreads, sauces, meats, crackers, maple products and other specialty foods. They've begun working with alcohol distributors to bring in Vermont-made wines, ciders and beers.

"[The customers] will pay a small fee to try products that they would not have been able to try before," Armstrong said. "It is going to be a real, nice, comfortable tasting room."

The room will hold eight people for a tasting at a time and a small separate section will be for non-alcoholic tastings. The company plans to open the tasting center for limited hours at first.

"We're not a restaurant. We're not a bar. We're a tasting room," Hopkins said.

The tastings also include an educational component, they said. During the tastings, the company will be explaining to the patrons how the various products are made, where they come from and the history of them.



After tasting an array of Vermont foods and beverages, the retail portion of the new venture will sell those items as well as well as other Vermont-made products such as wooden bowls, cooking utensils, wine racks, beer and wine glasses and other non-perishable foods.

A window is being placed between the gift shop area and the tasting room for customers to purchase and refill growlers of beer.

"We pretty much contacted all of the vendors we know that are Vermont oriented," Armstrong said.

In the future, the group is looking to also include home brewing ingredients — including the hops they grew just up the road.

The company has already been granted an alcohol permit for the tastings and resale so they need only to wait until the renovations are complete. They hope to open in May.

Meanwhile, Hopkins is lobbying the state Legislature to change laws regarding wine distribution so they can eventually bring in even more wine options. Currently, the state allows retailers to purchase from distributors and Hopkins says many wineries aren't large enough to do so.

Hopkins has authored a bill to allow second class license holders to drive to wineries, purchase the products and bring them back to the store themselves. Hopkins says the change will allow Vermont's wine industry to grow with the extra business the small wineries would receive.

"This is not one of those cases of eliminating the middle man," Hopkins said of the bill. "We're going to places that are not going through distributors."

State Rep. Bill Botzow sponsored the bill and Hopkins is hoping the change will become law and go into affect in July. Hopkins is traveling to Montpelier to testify on behalf of the bill on Wednesday.

In all, the new center is eyed to help build on those Vermont-made industries and brand by shedding light on the state's high-quality food and beverage products. While construction has already begun, they are hoping for a little help in starting up the new retail center with a Kick Starter campaign.


Tags: brewery,   food,   small business,   wine,   

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Crosby/Conte Statement of Interest Gets OK From Council

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff

Architect Carl Franceschi and Superintendent Joseph Curtis address the City Council on Tuesday.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — With the approval of all necessary bodies, the school district will submit a statement of interest for a combined build on the site of Crosby Elementary School.

The City Council on Tuesday unanimously gave Superintendent Joseph Curtis the green light for the SOI to the Massachusetts School Building Authority by April 12.

"The statement I would make is we should have learned by our mistakes in the past," Mayor Peter Marchetti said.

"Twenty years ago, we could have built a wastewater treatment plant a lot cheaper than we could a couple of years ago and we can wait 10 years and get in line to build a new school or we can start now and, hopefully, when we get into that process and be able to do it cheaper then we can do a decade from now."

The proposal rebuilds Conte Community School and Crosby on the West Street site with shared facilities, as both have outdated campuses, insufficient layouts, and need significant repair. A rough timeline shows a feasibility study in 2026 with design and construction ranging from 2027 to 2028.

Following the SOI, the next step would be a feasibility study to determine the specific needs and parameters of the project, costing about $1.5 million and partially covered by the state. There is a potential for 80 percent reimbursement through the MSBA, who will decide on the project by the end of the year.

Earlier this month, city officials took a tour of both schools — some were shocked at the conditions students are learning in.

Silvio O. Conte Community School, built in 1974, is a 69,500 square foot open-concept facility that was popular in the 1960s and 1970s but the quad classroom layout poses educational and security risks.  John C. Crosby Elementary School, built in 1962, is about 69,800 square feet and was built as a junior high school so several aspects had to be adapted for elementary use.

Ward 6 Councilor Dina Lampiasi said the walkthrough was "striking" at points, particularly at Conte, and had her thinking there was no way she would want her child educated there. She recognized that not everyone has the ability to choose where their child goes to school and "we need to do better."

"The two facilities that we are looking at I think are a great place to start," she said.

"As the Ward 6 councilor, this is where my residents and my students are going to school so selfishly yes, I want to see this project happen but looking at how we are educating Pittsfield students, this is going to give us a big bang for our buck and it's going to help improve the educational experience of a vast group of students in our city."

During the tour, Ward 5 Councilor Patrick Kavey, saw where it could be difficult to pay attention in an open classroom with so much going on and imagined the struggle for students.

Councilor at Large Alisa Costa said, "we cannot afford not to do this" because the city needs schools that people want their children to attend.

"I know that every financial decision we make is tough but we have to figure this out. If the roof on your house were crumbling in, you'd have to figure it out and that's where we're at and we can't afford to wait any longer," she said.

"We can't afford for the sake of the children going to our schools, for the sake of our city that we want to see grow so we have to build a city where people want to go."

Councilor at Large Kathy Amuso, who served on the School Building Needs Commission for about 18 years, pointed out that the panel identified a need to address Conte in 2008.

Curtis addressed questions about the fate of Conte if the build were to happen, explaining that it could be kept as an active space for community use, house the Eagle Academy or the Adult Learning Center, or house the central offices.

School attendance zones are a point of discussion for the entire school district and for this project.

"At one time I think we had 36 school buildings and now we have essentially 12 and then it would go down again but in a thoughtful way," Curtis said.

Currently, eight attendance zones designate where a student will go to elementary school. Part of the vision is to collapse those zones into three with hopes of building a plan that incorporates partner schools in each attendance zone.

"I think that going from eight schools to three would be easier to maintain and I think it would make more sense but in order to get there we will have to build these buildings and we will have to spend money," Kavey said, hoping that the city would receive the 80 percent reimbursement it is vying for.

This plan for West Street, which is subject to change, has the potential to house grades pre-kindergarten to first grade in one school and Grades 2 to 4 in another with both having their own identities and administrations. 

The districtwide vision for middle school students is to divide all students into a grade five and six school and a grade seven and eight school to ensure equity.

"The vagueness of what that looks like is worrisome to some folks that I have talked to," Lampiasi said.

Curtis emphasized that these changes would have to be voted on by the School Committee and include public input.

"We've talked about it conceptually just to illustrate a possible grade span allocation," he said. "No decisions have been made at all by the School Committee, even the grade-span proposals."

School Committee Chair William Cameron said it is civic duty of the committee and council to move forward with the SOI.
 
He explained that when seven of the city's schools were renovated in the late 1990s, the community schools were only 25 years old and Crosby was 35 years old.  The commonwealth did not deem them to be sorely in need of renovation or replacement.
 
"Now 25 years later, Crosby is physically decrepit and an eyesore. It houses students ages three to 11 in a facility meant for use by teenagers,"
 
"Conte and Morningside opened in the mid-1970s. They were built as then state-of-the-art schools featuring large elongated rectangles of open instructional space. Over almost half a century, these physical arrangements have proven to be inadequate for teaching core academic skills effectively to students, many of whom need extra services and a distraction-free environment if they are to realize their full academic potential."
 
He said  the proposal addresses a serious problem in the "economically poorest, most ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse area" of the city.
 
Cameron added that these facilities have been deemed unsatisfactory and need to be replaced as part of the project to reimagine how the city can best meet the educational needs of its students.  He said it is the local government's job to move this project forward to ensure that children learn in an environment that is conducive to their thriving academically.
 
"The process of meeting this responsibility needs to begin here tonight," he said.
 
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