Goddard College trustees announced Monday that the campus has been sold to a real estate developer in New Hampshire.

The board released few details about the latest buyer, saying only that it had signed a purchase and sales agreement with Mike Davidson of Execusuite, of Lebanon, N.H., and that Davidson doesn’t plan to demolish the buildings on the Plainfield campus.

“It’s an honor to lead the future of the Goddard College campus while preserving its bucolic, historic, and unique character,” the trustees quoted Davidson as saying. Davidson said in the statement that he plans to keep Goddard’s historic structures and to “collaborate with both the local and Goddard communities to find meaningful uses for all the buildings.”



The board did not say how much Davidson will pay for the property, which has been listed at $3.4 million in the past.
The campus' future has been a matter of intense interest since trustees announced in April that the small liberal arts institution would close.

A local group called Cooperation Vermont has been saying for months that is has been trying to buy the campus but was being rebuffed by trustees, a charge that the board has not responded to.

The director of that group, Michelle Eddleman McCormick, noted Monday that since May, the college has announced twice that it has found a buyer for the campus, only to see the deals fall through.

“The administration and trustees consistently send out notice of buyers they assert will help with the revitalization of Plainfield,” Eddleman McCormick wrote in a Facebook message. “Yet they also consistently refuse to listen to the local community about the future of the property or to engage with multiple viable offers from the one community-based organization trying to buy the campus at their asking price and keep it in local community control.”

The first buyer the trustees announced was a commercial real estate developer who withdraw his offer in June after local residents, staff and alumni protested the proposed sale, saying they wanted more information about his plans.

The second, in August, was called the Greatwood Project and was made up of a handful of local investors who backed out at the end of September, saying one of their funders had a change of heart.
A spokesperson for the Greatwood Project, Kris Gruen, said Monday that he’s relieved to hear Davidson doesn’t plan to tear down the school’s historic structures. He hopes his group can work with Davidson to use the property, a former agricultural estate that was built between 1908 and 1920. The property today includes about 130 acres of land in Plainfield, East Montpelier and Marshfield, 10 administrative and academic buildings, 12 dormitories and two maintenance buildings.

Lisa Larivee, a clerk to Goddard’s board of trustees, declined to release the closing date of the sale on Monday.

The latest news is unlikely to resolve discussions about the campus' future. Several alumni are working on projects that would revive the spirit of the alternative institution, which was founded in 1938, and many of them have said they would like to use the campus somehow.

One is Bethesda, Maryland resident Adam Myers, who graduated from Goddard in August and is part of a group called Remake Goddard that has been working to drum up enthusiasm and money for a new school or program that could carry on Goddard’s legacy.

Myers said Monday he's disappointed at the latest news of a pending sale.

“Losing the campus is something that affects the entire Goddard community,” he said. “It has emotional meaning.”

If he can’t work with Davidson somehow, Myers said, he’ll look in Vermont for another home for Remake Goddard’s project, which he calls the Goddard Institute.



“Vermont is such a core part of the Goddard identity,” he said.

Davidson did not immediately return calls or an email on Monday. A 2018 story in the Valley News  described Davidson as one of the largest landlords in the upper Connecticut Valley region of Vermont and New Hampshire, with a mix of residential and commercial properties.