Development Review Board to hear appeal on armory use permit

April 27, 2024 | By Lisa Scagliotti 

Like recent Waterbury Select Board meetings about the armory’s future use, the Development Review Board will hold its permit appeal hearing at the Main Street fire station which can accommodate more people than the meeting room at the municipal offices. Photo by Gordon Miller

Will Waterbury’s former National Guard armory eventually be used as a homeless shelter, and if so, does the state need to get a local permit? 

Those questions came up in January and Februrary and so far remain unresolved, but at least one of them will be addressed at an upcoming Development Review Board hearing. 

The review board has scheduled a meeting for Thursday, May 16, to consider whether the new role for the facility requires a local change of use permit. 

In January, state officials announced that they would like to put the former National Guard facility to use as a 40-bed congregate shelter as a new site in its evolving emergency housing inventory. Decommissioned in late 2022, the building at the end of Armory Drive in downtown Waterbury needed work before it could be used as an overnight accommodation for several dozen individuals. 

State officials visited Waterbury for several meetings to explain their plans and answer questions from community members and town leaders. Initially they described how the armory was needed by April 1 in anticipation of the state ending its funding for hundreds of individuals housed in motels and hotels. 

The announcement of shelter plans for the armory took local officials and community members by surprise. Two public meetings with the Waterbury Select Board attracted more than 200 people in person and watching online. Municipal Manager Tom Leitz compiled numerous questions and concerns from officials and the public into a five-page letter submitted to the state in mid-February.

The state legislature then extended funding for that program which is now anticipated to end June 30. In the meantime, the state Buildings and General Services Department hired contractors to make a slew of improvements to the armory building in anticipation of it eventually being used as a shelter. Work has been done to add a fire sprinkler system, new electrical, a new water line and other upgrades, officials have said. 

In March, Chris Winters, commissioner of the Department for Children and Families, which oversees emergency housing said the building was ready and that it now was most likely to be in the mix as a potential shelter location by summer or fall. Winters and local officials said the longer timeframe until a shelter might open would give the town and state the opportunity to address many issues regarding the operation of the shelter.

One outstanding question, however, is the local permit issue. 

On Feb. 8, Waterbury Zoning Administrator Mike Bishop wrote to the state buildings and General Services Commissioner Jennifer Fitch saying that the new function at the facility warranted local review and a permit. Bishop specified that the building has been considered a “government use” but that a shelter being run by a private contractor as state officials have described would represent a change in that use for the property and be subject to a permit requirement.

Assistant Attorney General Gregg Harris on Feb. 23 replied on behalf of the state filing an appeal to the town Development Review Board in the matter. 

On April 12, Harris again wrote to Bishop requesting that he withdraw the determination that the armory reuse needs a permit. Harris noted that the armory has been owned by the state since 1955 and the building has been under “government use” since that time. With the National Guard no longer using the facility, Buildings and General Services has yet to determine what its next use will be. “The State is considering several uses for the Building such as relocating State Surplus, and State Print and Postal. At this point however, there have been no final space allocation decisions made,” Harris wrote to the town. His letter does not mention using the armory as a homeless shelter. “The State has not submitted an application nor finalized a plan that would require a determination at this point,” he writes.

Bishop responded on April 17, declining the request to withdraw his decision “given the uncertainty with the state’s plan for the building,” he wrote back to Harris. Bishop said he stands by his February letter explaining the rationale for a permit based on Waterbury zoning regulations. 

The appeal hearing has been scheduled for Thursday, May 16, at 6:30 p.m. at the Main Street fire station. Bishop emphasized that the hearing is not to consider issuing a permit. The question before the town board is whether the circumstance requires a permit. 

Correspondence between town and state officials regarding the armory is online on the town website WaterburyVt.com under Armory Updates at the top of the home page and on the Development Review Board page under 2024 application packet information.