An aerial view of the Everett Mansion at Southern Vermont College in Bennington. Photo by SVC/Wikimedia Commons Where do Vermont colleges go when they die? They are resurrected as a Christian school, a luxury resort or an arts hub, if recent developments are any clue.   Facing deaths by a t housand cuts due to declining enrollment, debt and loss of accreditation, seven colleges — Green Mountain College, Southern Vermont College, College of St. Joseph’s, Marlboro College, New England Culinary Institute and Goddard College — in Vermont have closed, merged or reorganized since 2018, according to Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development Secretary Lindsay Kurrle.  Among the most high profile has been the college campus at the edge of downtown Poultney, which, after years of setbacks and false starts, may open its doors again — this time for religious education.  The whiskey mogul Raj Bhakta purchased the former Green Mountain College in 2020, and put forward several plans for redeveloping the campus before announcing a plan donating the property to a Christian organization aligned with the values of “Western Civilization” earlier this year.  Bhatka’s spokesperson Andrew Lohse told VTDigger this week that Bhatka selected Florida based Evangelist Tommie Zito to assume the campus property because of his goal to promote the “Third Great Awakening” in New England. Zito recently posted on social media, announcing the launch of a Christian institution called “Z University” based in Poultney.  The former Green Mountain College in Poultney. GMC photo In addition to the former Green Mountain College, several former campuses across Vermont that closed due in recent years to an uncertain future, leaving local communities to mourn the loss of institutions which are “silent generators of community,” and attempt to envision what comes next, said Denise Smith, executive director of Vermont Council on Rural Development.  Now that the dust is settling somewhat after the quick succession of closures, state and local leaders are taking a step back to assess how to respond when colleges struggle and how to support the redevelopment of these anchor points in local communities.  At a symposium in May at The Creative Campus at Goddard, another recently shuttered campus, Smith said state and local leaders discussed strategies such as an early community engagement, cutting back regulatory barriers to redevelopment and creating a statewide stewardship model to ensure ownership transfers are in the public interest.  College campuses are not just real estate, and the loss of the intellectual, cultural and economic opportunities that colleges brought to municipalities has yet to be seriously grappled with in Vermont, Smith said in an interview.  “Did we ever consider or value what these institutions were giving or providing to the state of Vermont while they were here?” Smith asked. ‘Catalytic investment’ in Bennington The closure of Southern Vermont College in 2019 was a gut punch for the local community, Shannon Barsotti, Bennington’s assistant town manager and community development coordinator, said. After the closure, the Southwestern Vermont Health Care, the parent company of the Southwestern Vermont Medical Center, acquired the campus in 2020. The health group utilized the site as COVID-19 testing and vaccination center and even a helicopter pad, but eventually phased out usage of the site, said Vice President of Support Services Ronald Zimmerman.  Now, a plan to transform the former Southern Vermont College campus into a luxury resort has received a key approval from the Bennington Development Review Board. The July 8 decision was finalized and released to the public Monday.  The developers with Alfred Weissman Real Estate, LLC were taken by the campus that is home to the “exquisite,” historic gilded-age era Everett Mansion, the summer cottage of glass manufacturing baron Edward Hamlin Everett, said the company’s principal Micheal Cohen. The developers are not deterred by complex, long-term projects that involve balancing historical preservation and energy efficiency goals, Cohen said, and want to work with the local community and invest in Bennington’s economy.  Alan Weissman, CEO of the real estate company, said in an interview that one of the challenges is converting the existing space to a modern day resort, equipped with an indoor and outdoor pool and a 10,000 square foot Nordic spa.  “Our experience is that whether it be the state, the town, and the community, everybody seems to be kind of pushing in the same direction,” added Weissman. “Everybody’s working toward the same goal of finding a creative and thoughtful way to restore this property and bring it back to life.” The developers still need to work through the Act 250 process, and the health group is holding on to the site while the developers jump through planning and permitting hoops. It will take between 18 months to two years to complete restoration and open the doors of the resort after state approval to go ahead with the project, said Weissman.  Barsotti called the destination resort plans a “catalytic investment” in the town that will create jobs and bring foot traffic to downtown businesses. New England beats out Bible Belt Zito’s vision for ‘Z University’ matched well with Bhakta’s goal of donating to an entity focused on the revival of the Christian faith with the resources to steward a historic campus property, Lohse said. Bhakta plans to transfer the property to Zito in October, after working through legal and financial plans and connecting with the town. Vermont is one of the least religious states in the country, so Zito hopes to have more of an impact in New England then he would in the Bible Belt, Lohse added, “It’s quite a godless place.” In Poultney, Bhakta’s company Regenerative Land Holdings faced alleged Act 250 violations from the state’s Land Use Review Board in March. The alleged infractions include selling alcohol, erecting a private school and modifying buildings listed in the Vermont State Register of Historic Places without authorization. Poultney assistant clerk Carol Bunce said that there has been no information given or transfer of ownership registered with the town as of Thursday. Residents in Poultney said previously that the town has invested in downtown businesses and local recreation opportunities while the fate of the campus has been in flux.  Redevelopment as an ‘evolving art’ Sterling College in Craftsbury is the most recent institution to shut its doors in 2025 after financial struggles. The college campus is up for sale and the local Headwaters Community Trust has expressed interest in the site for housing and childcare.  Goddard College in Plainfield folded in 2024, and was bought by Execusuite LLC, owned by Mike Davidson. Marlboro College in Marlboro, which closed in 2020 and merged with Emerson College. The campus changed hands until it was purchased by Marlboro Music in 2021, which has hosted a summer festival of world-renowned classical musicians for 75 years.  Goddard College in Plainfield in June 2023. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger Both Goddard and Marlboro are now home to artistic community hubs, which host residencies, workshops and performances of music, theater, writing and dance facilitated by non-profit entities — The Creative Campus at Goddard and Marlboro Music.  “It’s an evolving art in and of itself to see a college through a transformation like this,” said, Kalya Yannatos, Marlboro Music’s managing director.   ‘In-demand jobs’ The Vermont College of Fine Arts took a different tack, curtailing educational pursuits on campus in Montpelier in 2022, and finally announcing an affiliation agreement with the California Institute of the Arts in 2024.  A new engineering school initiative called Greenway Institute bought several Vermont College of Fine Arts buildings, and is currently fundraising to launch the debt-free college with integrated work experience, said Mark Sommerville, founding president, who has previously launched a new engineering school called Olin College in Massachusetts.  The Greenway Institute campus will not house extracurricular resources such as athletic facilities or theaters that many traditional college campuses do, said Cal Thompson, an advisor for the Greenway Institute. Students can instead seek out entertainment in the Montpelier area, a win-win for the financial sustainability of higher education and the surrounding area’s economy, Thompson added.  Education institutions are economic drivers that the state relies on to train the next generation of workers, but the current education model is evolving, said Kurrle. The state has an aging population and declining birth rate, Kurrle said, and the current workforce in the state is not fully aligned with in-demand jobs such as engineers, registered nurses, educators, carpenters and hospitality workers. An engineering school like Greenway is a creative way to fill that gap in the workforce, Kurrle said.  The state’s main goal is to keep campuses productive even if use changes, said Kurrle and financial resources and community buy-in are necessary for college campus redevelopment efforts to be successful. “The success will be measured on whether we have preserved opportunity, jobs, community vitality, because the last thing we want is a closed campus to sit idle,” Kurrle said. Read the story on VTDigger here: Shuttered Vermont colleges: reincarnated and repurposed.  . ...read more read less