What's a ‘college town' after the college closes? This Vermont community is finding out.

Boston Globe

13-03-2025

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But the loss of Green Mountain College has also been a lesson in patience for Poultney's 3,000 residents, who are anxiously watching how life in their small town will be transformed by the decisions of a wealthy entrepreneur.
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'I just hope the Bhaktas follow through,' said Emily Stockwell, owner of Everyday Flowers in Poultney.
The 185-year-old Green Mountain College was once a
At least
rural towns are anchored by private schools that provide reliable jobs and draw residents to places they likely would not otherwise go. As these colleges close, their hometowns, too, face economic peril.
The Bhaktas hope to transform the campus into a high-end destination focused on education, hospitality, and tourism.
Caleb Kenna for the Boston Globe
Plainfield, Vt., outside Montpelier, for example, faced a hole in its budget after the now-closed Goddard College stopped paying property taxes. And Aurora, N.Y.,
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Anthony Sorrentino, a University of Pennsylvania administrator, likened the precarity facing these communities to the aftermath of a coal mine or factory closing.
'Could this be the equivalent of the Rust Belt of the 1970s and 1980s?' he said.
Poultney believed it would be spared that fate, said town librarian Rebecca Cook. The auto shop, hunting goods retailer, and other businesses on Main Street largely relied on townsfolk — not the students — to survive, and housing-starved Vermonters quickly filled the homes vacated by Green Mountain students. The average home price
But Green Mountain was nonetheless essential to Poultney. It supported 150 jobs and $6 million in annual payroll in a town whose population shrank by 12 percent, 432 people, between 2010 and 2020. Most students and staff left town when the college closed in May 2019.
'There was real fear when the college closed that Poultney would dry up and fly away,' said Tom Mauhs-Pugh, the former Green Mountain provost.
Over the next year, with no one caring for the campus, its prewar buildings and unkempt lawns deteriorated in the Vermont winter.
There was talk of the state taking control, and rumors the school might become a prison or rehabilitation facility. Alumni were unable to pool enough money to buy even a portion of the property.
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In August 2020, Bhakta bought Green Mountain at auction for $5 million, emerging as a willing, if flashy, savior. He was running a distillery on a nearby dairy farm, but was better known for being
a contestant on 'The Apprentice' and running for Congress in Pennsylvania. He also once tried to
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Much of Bhakta's fortune now comes from his litigious exit from WhistlePig, the high-quality rye whiskey company he founded in 2007. But he makes his money now from a boutique French brandy,
It's all made him a Gatsbyesque figure in a part of New England where
Raj Bhakta, the owner of the former Green Mountain College in Poultney, in his office.
Caleb Kenna for the Boston Globe
Poultney and Green Mountain were once synonymous. Professors took over the pub for weekly jams, and campus staff invited the community to
student concerts and to freely use the gym. Each May, graduates would walk in a celebratory procession toward Ames Hall, the school's stately Federal-style dormitory. (All those nice touches, locals joked, made up for the near-perpetual haze of marijuana smoke on the campus lawn.)
'It was like a dream,' said Laird Christensen, a former environmental studies professor at Green Mountain. 'This was the closest I had ever come to seeing a sustainable intentional community, but it turned out to be not sustainable financially.'
Enrollment sank gradually until 2019, when
there was not a single student paying full tuition.
Facing mounting costs and unable to merge with nearby schools, Green Mountain closed with $20 million in debt.
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Poultney sensed the shift before it happened. A decade ago, residents decided to lean into Vermont's $2 billion outdoor recreation industry by expanding trails and youth programming and catering to visitors to nearby Lake St. Catherine and Bomoseen. A
The improvements are largely funded by the family of Steve Conine, a cofounder of online furniture retailer
Wayfair who lives in Poultney part time, and their nonprofit, Slate Valley Trails. That, along with a federal grant to hire a community development director, proved to be a saving grace after the Green Mountain closure.
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The Delaware and Hudson Trail is a multi-use recreation trail that runs through Poultney, Vt.
(Caleb Kenna for The Boston Globe)
Downtown Putney hosts many businesses.
(Caleb Kenna for The Boston Globe)
Today Poultney supports not one, but two bike shops. Some 15,000 visitors traverse 60-plus miles of hiking trails each year, and efforts are underway to build a new outdoor recreation hub in town. Meanwhile, nonprofits backed by Green Mountain alumni have bubbled up to fill the cultural calendar, drawing visitors from as far as an hour away. Reclaimed Vermont provides low-cost workspaces for local craftspeople and knitting classes, and Stone Valley Arts hosts frequent open mics.
'The folks that are running this community have been open minded about all of this in ways that I have not always seen,' said Sarah Pelkey, Poultney's community development director. 'It might have been driven by an absolute need to figure this out.'
Before Green Mountain closed, nearly one-third of Poultney residents worked in education services, census data shows. It will take time to recover from that, said Nathan D. Grawe, a professor at Carleton College
in Minnesota who has studied demographic changes in higher education.
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'These schools had business models that were too dependent on the notion of endlessly increasing size. They thought there were always more students to be recruited,' he said. 'Now that that is no longer the case, the town has to struggle to find a new economic identity.'
Bhakta said he now spends $2 million a year heating and maintaining the Green Mountain campus, on top of the six-figure investment that funded the renovation of a former campus building into his family residence. He and his wife, Danhee Kim, also operate the Green Mountain Community School, a non-traditional private institution, where 20 elementary schools flit between learning to read and mastering martial arts.
Most of the Bhaktas' children attend.
Twenty students from kindergarten to sixth grade attend the Green Mountain Community School.
Caleb Kenna for the Boston Globe
'If showing up with our five children and five horses doesn't prove to the people that we are committed, I don't know what will,' Kim said.
That attitude inspires Nicole Bowery, a Poultney native and local restaurateur who is renovating the old town train station into a 1920s-style eatery, with copper-colored floors and a menu catering to a more 'intellectual palate' for the monied tourists Bhakta promises to bring.
'Everyone says build it and they'll come,' Bowery said.
'But will they come without what Raj is proposing?'
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It's all taking a while. Bhakta blames the 'anti-business' sentiment in Vermont for lack of action on his
In 2021, Poultney officials updated zoning to give Bhakta greater flexibility on the campus, but residents rejected an initiative to reduce its tax bill, which jumped to $100,000 after Green Mountain lost its educational exemption. Poultney's Select Board has also raised concerns about how an influx of tourists could impact the town police force.
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Poultney's old railroad station.
(Caleb Kenna for The Boston Globe)
Nicole Bowery, a Poultney native, is renovating it into a tapas place called "Tasteful Station."
(Caleb Kenna for The Boston Globe)
Bhakta likens the hesitation from public officials to, well, smothering an idea at its inception.
'The state will say that we want to encourage growth,' Bhakta said. 'But the moment that they see a baby taking their first breaths, the machinery comes in and strangles the baby. And then the baby dies, and they wonder what happened.'
In the interim, Bhakta is sponsoring armagnac tastings, treating potential connoisseurs to coq au vin dinners and ice baths. He's also brainstorming his 'work college,' envisioning a place where, for example, students could learn both agriculture and business skills to run a farm.
Amid the delays, townsfolk remain wary. Former colleges across the country have been turned into casinos,
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That's what Martin Van Buren Jr. worries about with Green Mountain. The 28-year-old Poultney native cannot shake the feeling Bhakta could simply sell the campus at any time, noting he has previously hinted he
would consider the option.
'It feels like a political campaign to me,' Van Buren added. 'You're saying all these things to get to the position that you want to be.'
Resident Krista Rupe is unclear, too, about whether her town is a pillar or a pawn in Bhakta's plans. But the charm offensive can win you over: The family hosted a Fourth of July event on the Green Mountain lawn with a magic show, bounce house, and lemonade stand and allowed kids to frolic freely. In a parade beforehand, Rupe led the procession in Bhakta's 1948 Mercury convertible, a treat for being named Citizen of the Year.
'I can't say it wasn't fun,' Rupe said.
Green Mountain's Federal-style dormitory, Ames Hall, anchors the west end of Main Street in Poultney.
Caleb Kenna for the Boston Globe
Diti Kohli can be reached at