Rutland County leaders roll up their sleeves

Vermont Business Magazine, Jun 01, 2005 by Barna, Ed

These slow-motion, summer-and-fall festivals typically follow the same pattern: start with unadorned forms, often from a particular maker of lifesize, hollow, polystyrene animals; have artists, school classes, and other volunteers decorate them; exhibit the colorful, remarkably varied results in businesses and public spaces; then auction them off to raise money for some good cause (in Brandon, the Guild and art education in the schools).

This year, Brandon has added another art form with the arrival of Cafe Provence, the lifetime dream of Chef Robert Barral, formerly head chef at the New England Culinary Institute in Burlington and still a TV personality with his weekly cooking show there. Just as Kimble proved that an art studio could be a tourist destination (one Brandon inn's Internet ads simply list "Warren Kimble" as a reason to come, as if he were a lake, museum or historic site) Barral has shown there can be a destination restaurant.

People arrive from other states and stay overnight at one of the dozen or so local inns, Barral said. On Mondays, he hosts cooking classes, and "we have regulars coming every week," he said, "from Burlington, Rutland, Middlebury. Some people book a month in advance."

Early on, one devotee of his cooking wanted to assure the restaurant's survival and bought 75 gifts certificates to give to friends - $100 gift certificates. Barral, who is now opening a bakery and gift shop in a second downtown location that his wife Line will supervise, said "We're surrounded by great people at the restaurant, and we love the community. I don't see any other place I would like to be than Brandon."

Less flamboyantly, the managers of Vermont Tubbs Furniture and Nexus Custom Electronics have kept those two major employers going despite global challenges. And there's a bit of the art of the deal involved in Brandon's resurgence: development coordinator Buzz Racine, a Brandon High School graduate who made a strong career for himself in the military, has retired from administrative work in the reserves to become a tireless facilitator and grant-seeker. One of his latest projects adds yet another art: video production, in the form of a promotional town portrait that the Rutland Economic Development Corporation will take to trade shows.

Brandon is only the most dramatic example of the kind of carefully thought out, incremental civic development seen in the area. A partial list from among the county's 27 communities could include:

* Fair Haven, where the Select Board has voted to lease a lot at the largely disused Fair Haven Airport (not counting model airplane enthusiasts, picnickers and hunters) to Dana Hall of Queensbury, New York, who has said he will act as airport manager and fixed base operator (gas, repairs) while creating a business building lifts for use in repairing planes. That depends on there being a turnkey building, something the Town cannot afford to build. Town Meeting voters rejected the idea of an airport commission, but Selectman Bill Rozensky and Phil Stannard, who have led the effort to expand operations at the 1930s-era field, are trying to put together a group of investors for that purpose, Rozensky said.