The playground at Wobby Park in Barre City’s North End will be redeveloped into 17 townhomes. Photo by David Littlefield / Vermont Public Carly Berlin covers housing and infrastructure for Vermont Public, in partnership with VTDigger. A few months after flooding devastated Barre City in 20 23, Gov. Phil Scott unveiled a bold vision for redeveloping his hometown. Buildings near the river in the city’s hard-hit North End neighborhood would be demolished and converted back to a floodplain, and hundreds of new homes would be built on higher ground. But recovery efforts in the neighborhood stalled as the Republican governor’s plan sat on ice for years – even as another flood inundated the area.  Three years onward, Scott returned to Barre on Thursday to announce that a scaled-down version of North End redevelopment is now moving forward. City leaders say it’s just a first step.  “It isn’t as grand as I had originally hoped, but it’s still going to be impactful to this region and this part of the city, in particular,” Scott said at a press conference marking the occasion.  Gov. Phil Scott speaks at a press conference in Barre on Thursday to announce the award of funding for a flood recovery project in the city’s North End. Photo by Carly Berlin / Vermont Public State officials have awarded the city $4.2 million for a housing development on city-owned land just outside the flood zone, combined with several flood buyouts of properties nearby. The funding represents the last allotment of Vermont’s nearly $68 million tranche of federal disaster recovery money approved by Congress in late 2024.   The city-owned land is currently a playground and park located next to Barre’s public safety complex. The city plans to sell the land, known as Wobby Park, to housing developers for one dollar, according to Barre City Mayor Thom Lauzon. The developers, local contractors Trym Chouinard and Eric Lajeunesse, plan to build 17 townhomes there.  Two commercial and one residential property across the street will be bought out and torn down, restoring the area to green space, according to the state’s funding award. The city will then create a new park at that site to replace the one where the future homes will go, Lauzon said.   The 17 homes will be sold at subsidized prices, a requirement of this type of long-range federal disaster recovery funding. The target for-sale price is $270,000, according to Chouinard. Qualified buyers will also receive down payment assistance, he said, though details on the amount of aid are still being finalized. The two-bedroom homes will be constructed in an East Montpelier factory by modular homebuilder Huntington Homes. Chouinard expects to break ground in May 2027 and wrap up construction next summer.  Two properties on North Main Street in Barre that are slated for buyouts with federal flood recovery funding. Photo by David Littlefield / Vermont Public The city has been trying to court a housing development on the relatively high ground of Wobby Park for years. The nonprofit developer Downstreet eyed building three or four homes there in 2024 but ultimately didn’t move forward.  The city applied for the federal disaster funds twice previously for the area, with a focus on paying for buyouts and increased flood storage, Lauzon said. Once they added more housing to their application, they were approved on their third try. Vermont’s $68 million in federal recovery funds have offered a rare opportunity to help build new housing outside of the state’s most flood-prone areas. While the Federal EmergencyManagement Agency’s aid programs generally require a homeowner to repair their damaged home, for instance, or buy them out with no guarantee of an available home to move into, these more flexible funds can allow a community to create homes where they didn’t exist before.  The state has allocated the funding toward building out infrastructure to support new homes on higher ground in Plainfield and Montpelier, renovating a vacant Vermont State University building in Johnson into housing, and replacing a bridge in Cabot to better accommodate rising waters, among other projects. Two other housing projects in Barre also received funds. One of the epicenters of flood damage in recent years, Barre has struggled with how to bolster its tax base as flooded properties get torn down. Twenty-eight Barre City properties have already gone through the buyout process and more are underway, said Central Vermont Recovery Officer Patricia Moulton at Thursday’s press conference.  Second Street in Barre’s North End after flooding in July 2024, one year after historic floods hit the area. Photo by Peter Hirschfeld / Vermont Public  The federal recovery funding is expected to support the construction of about 139 new homes in the city overall, Scott said. The new homes won’t specifically be earmarked for people displaced by the floods, though disaster case managers will help connect flood survivors to the new options, said Chief Recovery Officer Douglas Farnham. Lauzon, the mayor, emphasized that the new townhomes in the old park are only the first phase of redeveloping the area. “We probably need to replicate this project four or five more times in order to bring meaningful recovery to the North End,” he said. Read the story on VTDigger here: Barre wins flood recovery funds for long-awaited North End housing. ...read more read less