Woodstock National project a monstrosity

Most of us agree that the need for truly affordable housing in Woodstock is of paramount importance. We also might agree that this issue has long been neglected and that even the most recent plans to address it are insufficient and very possibly counterproductive. We need laws that protect both our environment and our town from suburbanization, encouraging affordable housing without inviting a feeding frenzy for predatory developers.

And that brings us to the Woodstock National project. Some have suggested that, in the absence of anything better, maybe this monstrosity of a proposal could be somehow amended to suit our community’s needs. Perhaps they could just drop the “championship golf course” and the helipad, as some falsely believe they already have. But that still leaves a luxury refuge for wealthy second-homers, with somewhere between 12 to 24 “affordable” units tucked away in its ghetto, as compared to 10 times as many luxury ones … in other words, the minimum required ratio currently placed on developers in exchange for carving up our town.

But even if they were to add more modest dwellings, so as to bolster rather than further undermine the economic diversity that was once our town’s hallmark, there still remain the massive environmental threats. There’s no way to find common ground when the project would destroy precious ground, ecologically and culturally. The issues are many and complex, and can be much better explained in the video presented at the STOP Woodstock National LLC Virtual Town Hall, which can be found at https:// youtu.be/WcVYtTtXwOU. There’s a delicate balance between building and conserving. We Woodstockers (and neighbors, since this affects all of us) need to find it together.

— Alan Weber,

Woodstock