Seventeen months after Peace Field Farm proprietor John Holland last appeared before the Woodstock Town Development Review Board (TDRB) for a second time to seek site plan approval and a conditional use permit to operate a farm-to-fork restaurant at 650 Pomfret Road, the developer was back before the quasi-judicial town body for a third round on Tuesday evening, seeking essentially the same permit he was granted in December 2023.
The pitched battle over the on-farm restaurant proposed by Peace Field landowner Holland and tenant farmer-restaurateur and Woodstock native Matt Lombard, who leases the 111-acre farmstead on the Woodstock/Pomfret line, is beginning its fifth year of serpentine legal machinations without any conclusive resolution.
In a letter to the TDRB intended to serve as a supplement to his most recent permit application before the town body that polices the Town of Woodstock’s zoning regulations, Holland couched the newly sought permit in the context of an amendment to the town by-laws that recently did away with a requirement that the footprint of any on-farm eatery was not to exceed 2,800 square feet. “After many meetings and an analysis of this reference on the ability to operate a restaurant in the barns around Woodstock, the Woodstock Planning Commission eliminated the provision by vote on Nov. 6, 2024,” Holland wrote. “Upon the Planning Commission’s recommendation, the Selectboard took up the matter and approved the amendment on the 31st of March. This application is filed under these new laws,” the Boston-based developer said.
The present application packet submitted on behalf of Holland and Lombard runs to 156 pages in length, encompassing both the legal documents filed by Holland’s attorney, Anthony LaRosa, and countering filings that attorneys representing Peace Field Farm neighbors and restaurant opponents Tom Meyerhoff and Cynthia Volk have filed before multiple local and state bodies and the Environmental Court dating back to the outset of the legal machinations over the proposed on-farm restaurant.
In their filing with the TDRB and in Holland’s appearance before the development review panel on Tuesday evening, the Peace Field representatives took pains to point out that Holland has accepted all the conditions that an earlier iteration of the Woodstock board placed on the site plan approval and permit that was authorized in 2023.
Last Friday, May 23, attorney Christopher Boyle of Lincoln, representing Meyerhoff and Volk, submitted a letter to the Woodstock TDRB calling on the panel to deny Peace Field’s current permit application on multiple grounds.
By state statute, the TDRB has 45 days to issue a ruling on any of the cases. Should the TDRB grant or deny Peace Field’s most recent application for site plan approval and a conditional use permit for the proposed on-farm restaurant, litigants Meyerhoff, Volk, and Holland will have 30 days in which to once again appeal the latest decision to the Vermont Environmental Court.
For more on this, please see our May 29 edition of the Vermont Standard.
