Following a unanimous decision officially posted by the Woodstock Town Development Review Board (TDRB), municipal chief of staff and zoning administrator Stephanie Appelfeller issued a permit on June 20, allowing Peace Field Farm owner/developer John Holland and tenant farmer/chef/restaurateur Matt Lombard to operate an on-farm restaurant at 650 Pomfret Road.
Longtime opponents of the farm-to-fork restaurant wasted not a day of the 30-day permit appeal period. Lincoln attorney Christopher Boyle filed an appeal of the latest TDRB decision on behalf of Peace Field neighbors Tom Meyerhoff and Cynthia Volk with the Vermont Superior Court, Environmental Division, commonly known as the Environmental Court, within just over two hours of the town’s official posting of the on-farm restaurant permit for Peace Field. Boyle did not respond to requests for comment about the speedy appeal he filed on behalf of his clients — the third time the TDRB has granted a permit to Peace Field Farm to operate an on-farm restaurant and the second time the quasi-judicial governing body has okayed essentially the same permit in the past 18 months.
In its permit decision of May 27, officially noticed and posted publicly on June 20, the Woodstock TDRB granted site plan and conditional use approval for Peace Field Farm to operate its proposed farm-to-fork restaurant off Pomfret Road, in close proximity to the Pomfret town line, holding that the restaurant as planned is fully compliant with the municipality’s town plan and current zoning regulations relative to on-farm restaurants operating in Woodstock’ five-acre, rural/residential (R-5) zoning districts.
No date has yet been set for a preliminary conference between the restaurant litigants before a Vermont Environmental Court judge regarding the most recent legal and regulatory wrangling in the four-and-a-half-year-old Peace Field case.
A newly renovated and expanded Mangalitsa to reopen this fall
On a different but related topic, Holland and farmer/chef Lombard were able to share good news for beleaguered local residents and tourists seeking places to dine in the Woodstock area, particularly during peak times such as the summer months and foliage season: the long-shuttered, high-end Mangalitsa restaurant, closed for the past three years and the victim of multiple construction and renovation delays, is set to reopen at 61 Central Street in Woodstock Village this fall.
For more on this, please see our July 3 edition of the Vermont Standard.
