November 2, 2026 | By Lisa Scagiotti A Harwood School Board committee will take a first look today at five proposals for evaluating the Cabot Creamery office headquarters in Waitsfield to determine if it could be suitable as a future elementary school.
The proposals have price tags ranging from approximately $140,000 to $189,000 and are from five firms, four in Vermont and one from Maine.
The Cabot headquarters in Waitsfield. Photo courtesy of Cabot Creamery.
The Building Use and Visioning Committee of the Harwood Unified Union School District School Board meets today at 4:30 p.m. via Zoom.
The district has received proposals from five architectural firms to take a close look at the 32,000-square-foot Cabot building on 7.5 acres on Home Farm Way near Mad River Park. The company put the building up for sale this summer $2.95 million.
To operate the district more efficiently, school officials are considering whether to reduce the number of buildings the Harwood district operates. One concept under consideration would combine the four current elementary schools in Moretown, Fayston, Waitsfield and Warren and the Cabot property has emerged as a potential site option. Such a move would be several years into the future.
Several weeks ago, the district put out a call for architectural firms to evaluate the property to determine what it would entail to convert the office building for use as an elementary school. Proposals were due on Oct. 30, and the school board’s building committee will take a first look at them today. Each lays out the firm’s approach to the project, listing team members who would participate and offering examples of relevant past project experience. In all cases, the work would be done over several months with reports back to the district in early 2027. The proposals are:
$139,880 from Black River Design Architects in Montpelier
$149,600 from Harriman based in Auburn, Maine
$159,916 from Vermont Integrated Architecture in Waitsfield and Middlebury
$179,920 from the Burlington firm TruexCullins, which has been working with the Harwood district on facility planning and design for over a decade.
$188,550 from gbArchitecture in Burlington
The proposals are posted on the school district website, attached to the committee’s meeting agenda for today here.
The committee’s look at the offers for the Cabot evaluation comes as it also is looking to discuss a more immediate move that could happen as soon as the 2027-28 school year to take a first step toward combining the valley elementary schools. School officials have proposed a scenario that would combine the four schools into two of the existing schools by next fall. Such a move has been presented as not needing any new construction, but it would involve shifting students in the district’s two middle schools.
The building committee’s meetings are open to the public and held via Zoom only. They are streamed and posted on the district’s YouTube page as well. Only those joining by Zoom may participate during the public comment period.
The full Harwood School Board on Wednesday will continue its work of discussing steps needed for building the 2027-28 school budget, including steps to potentially combine some school facilities. That meeting is in person at 6 p.m. in the Harwood library and available via Zoom to participate and on YouTube to watch. Agenda with links is here.