by Ed Sutherland
As the leaves turned color and the air turned crisp, construction finally began October 2 on the new home of Northfield’s Green Mountain Family Practice (GMFP). Slowed first by design considerations and then by environmental review, the start of construction slipped from August to September to October, but the builders have now beaten the clock—revving up the heavy equipment before autumn color yields to frozen ground.
To be built by developer E.F. Wall of Barre, the 10,000-square-foot facility along Crescent Avenue is expected to open its doors in June 2015.
Central Vermont Medical Center, which owns GMFP, plans to lease the building from Wall. CVMC has already signed a lease for the land, owned by Norwich University, CVMC spokeswoman Susan Kruthers told The Bridge. Neither the university nor Wall had any statement on the ground-breaking.
The clinic will employ 14 workers. The facility will include a 52-car parking lot, outdoor HVAC fixtures, all-night illumination and a stormwater runoff pond. The site, at the base of Paine Mountain, had been part of the university’s outdoor activity center and abuts multiple residential properties, some of whose owners had raised objections about the development’s impacts on the neighborhood.
