Gloomy Weather, High Spirits on Pavilion Raising Day
Volunteers, TimberHomes Vermont raise the new pavilion gathering space on Hinesburg's Town Common in the center of town.
By Claire MacDonald
Hinesburg Record Staff Reporter
The clouds hung low over Hinesburg on Saturday, June 6, dark gray and promising rain. Despite the gloomy conditions, the Town Common was bustling with volunteers from town and workers from TimberHomes Vermont as they raised the timber frame pavilion in one day. Residents stopped by to drink coffee, chat with neighbors and cheer on the crew.
The pavilion – to be named the Brian Busier Pavilion in honor of the late owner of Lantman’s Market – is intended as a central space for the community to gather.
“There are 400 new houses coming to Hinesburg, and the threat is that we’re going to be a bedroom town,” said Will Patten, one of the prime organizers of the Town Common. “How do we hang on to a sense of community? We do it with gathering spaces. Where can people meet their neighbors and feel like a part of the town? This is a big part of it.”
The Town Common – and the pavilion – is funded entirely by donations and much of the work has been done by volunteers.
“There wasn’t going to be any tax money for this,” said Patten. “This is from the ground up.”
Patten, also a member of the Hinesburg Economic Development Committee, added that public funding wasn’t an option.
“If we put [town funding] to a vote, it would go down,” he said. “The other thing is, by having volunteers do it, there’s a sense of ownership … we’re going to continue to get volunteers involved in every part of this, because when people own it, they care about it.”
The Busier family donated the money to purchase the timber, Patten said, and the Town Common Committee reached out and received many more individual donations. He added that Gregg Lyman did the excavation for free, and SD Ireland donated concrete.
Town Common Committee member Brandon Stanley said that getting the necessary number of volunteers to come out and help build was easy.
“One Front Porch Forum post and we immediately got more than 14,” he said. “Everyone’s pretty excited; I think people are curious. A lot of people live here, and I think they want to walk by it and go, ‘I put that together.’”
The timber frame was built and assembled indoors during the winter by the TimberHomes Vermont crew, then taken apart and reassembled in the one-day affair on the Common. The lumber is entirely Vermont wood, with the four corners of ash coming specifically from Hinesburg, Stanley said.
Hinesburg resident and volunteer Oliver King noted how special the day was.
“[It’s] such an old New England tradition, of everyone in the town coming together to raise a barn or whatever it is,” he said. “Everything’s getting bigger and fancier now. It’s nice to be building stuff the same way we would 300 years ago here.”
The concept of a pavilion had been on the town plan since 2007, Patten said. The Common will see more than the timber frame structure, as well – a playground and entryway are to be installed, and there will be tree planting and landscaping.
Resident Ryan Joseph said he hopes the construction of the pavilion will create a welcoming space.
“I walk through the neighborhoods all the time,” he said, “and having an empty field is fine, but it would be great to have people here.”
Resident Brady Lasher echoed this sentiment, saying that prior to this, the closest thing to a central gathering space for Hinesburg was the town hall green.
On Sunday the weather turned downright soggy. Despite almost an inch of rain a crew of volunteers worked on the roof. They all went home for lunch – and dry clothing – and returned for the afternoon. It will take at least another day to finish.
