In Woodstock last Thursday afternoon, David Hall drove up a steep dirt road, his newly hired local consultant, Kevin Ellis, in the Ford sedan’s passenger seat.
He pulled up to King Farm, 154 acres of preserved farm and forest, with a clapboard farmhouse that is headquarters for the Two Rivers-Ottauquechee Regional Commission. It was the first of a handful of meetings Ellis had scheduled for Hall’s three-day visit. He was there to start convincing the commission staff and executive committee members that his futuristic plan is right for Vermont.
Bill Emmons, the committee chair, invited the wealthy Mormon businessman to take a seat at the wood table. Emmons, a Pomfret resident, wore Carhartts and a baseball cap with the words Cloudland Farm — a cattle-and-vegetable operation that’s been in his family since 1908.
Dressed in a pristine white dress shirt and khaki pants, Hall didn’t waste time getting to the point: “I’m the darn guy that caused all these problems, and I’m here to explain what’s going on.”
Among the 21 people who’d come to hear Hall’s explanation were a Bloomberg Businessweek reporter and several local journalists, including Nicole Antal. She uncovered Hall’s plans last March after noticing that an entity called NewVista Foundation had bought 900 acres in Sharon, South Royalton, Strafford and Tunbridge.
Hall gave a meandering account of his personal history. His father invented a synthetic diamond, and Hall said he himself has 600 patents, many related to drilling technology.
Inspired by a historic document drafted by Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon religion, Hall wants to build densely populated communities in multiple locations around the world, supported by local agriculture and industry. Buildings would be outfitted with sophisticated waste-management systems and rooftop greenhouses.
This out-there proposal has stoked concern throughout the Upper Valley, where people worry that it would destroy the bucolic character of their communities.
By Hall’s estimate, the 20,000-person development — a mash-up of Mormon principles and modern technology — won’t happen in Vermont for at least several decades. But if it’s a success, he told the commission, his foundation would keep going. “In my crazy mind … you’d have 20 million people in Vermont,” he said.
The room was silent.
After Hall finished his intro, people began politely but bluntly critiquing his vision.
Preeminent environmentalist Gus Speth, of Strafford, told Hall: “You have selected the most incongruous place imaginable to plop this huge experiment in social engineering down.” He went on, “It’s the biggest existential threat to this area that I can imagine.”
Speth also cautioned Hall: “The people who live here are going to fight every step of the way to be sure that this doesn’t come to fruition.”
Hall listened to Speth placidly before replying: “I don’t intend it to happen here for a long time.” A moment later, he doubled down: “I personally think that eventually, the people of Vermont will ask for it.”
Emmons seemed slightly more open to the idea. “I think you’re onto something,” he told Hall. But, he added, “I’m not sure it’s the right place.”
In Vermont, where Hall says he has purchased 1,500 of the 5,000 acres he needs for the first community, his only imminent plan is to start experimenting with new farming techniques that rely on modular greenhouses and technology pioneered by marijuana growers.
Emmons suggested that “conventional farmers” prefer to work in open fields and might not embrace the greenhouse approach. He encouraged Hall to have his engineers focus on more pragmatic goals — for instance, figuring out a more efficient method of haying.
The Utah businessman’s eagerness to engage with local residents was also fueling their fears. Speth suggested that Hall was attempting to “lull people into thinking that this is a remote thing that’s not going to happen, when you seem to be moving as fast as you can.”
At the end of the 90-minute meeting, Emmons thanked Hall for coming.
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you can’t reason with a crazy person and Mr. Crazy Mind David Hall is off the deep end. He expects he can throw around a few dollars and wait it out. The people of central Vermont will never go for his whacko plan, it’s time for you to leave now Mr. Hall.
“In utopia, rule by masterminds is both necessary and necessarily primitive, for it excludes so much that is known to man and about man. The mastermind is driven by his own boundless conceit and delusional aspirations, which he self-identifies as a noble calling. He alone is uniquely qualified to carry out this mission. He is, in his own mind, a savior of mankind, if only man will bend to his own will. Such can be the addiction of power. It can be an irrationally egoistic and absurdly frivolous passion that engulfs even sensible people. In this, mastermind suffers from a psychosis of sorts and endeavors to substitute his own ambitions for the individual ambitions of millions of people.”
― Mark R. Levin, Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America
I am not willing to write this project off quite yet. If David Hall is planning to develop a new urbanist community, which have been successfully developed throughout the US I might consider it in a more favorable light. If it is anything like Seaside, Florida, which I visited this month, I was pretty impressed.
What makes me crazy is that some see Hall as a threat to our bucolic beauty. Years ago we outlawed billboards for that very reason. Now our hillsides are spawning solar arrays that look like organized junk yards. Maybe it about time we got our priorities straight. Hall is on the mark. GroSolar and similar organizations only want cheap space to make their profit at the expense of those of us who value Vermont’s once unsurpassed beauty.
The Upper Valley is getting overrun by megalomaniacal multi-millionaire developers and their out of touch development delusions of grandeur. Jesse Sammis at Exit 4, Scott Milne at Exit 1, and now David Hall at Exit 2. In each case they show complete disregard for the people who live there, and the impacts their massive developments will have on the communities and towns. When the citizens of Randolph expressed concern about the massive and out of scale development at Exit 4, they were told a similar line of BS, that they should not be concerned, because the development won’t happen for 20 years. 20 years, 50 years, it’s the standard deflection tactic right out of developers’ playbook. Heard it so many times. So we should just sit back and let our children’s and grandchildren”s futures be ruined by these people? And then look back at those areas 20-30 years later and see how they were destroyed, and how those projects turned out to be flops. Vermont is becoming the place for out of state wealth to exploit cheap rural land. The same thing is going on with out of state companies building massive solar farms on prime ag land (instead of rooftops, parking lots and landfills), only to sell the renewable energy credits out of state, thus not doing anything to help Vermont reach it’s 90% renewable energy goals.
This article is pretty weak in it’s description of the NewVistas project. VTDigger has a much more in-depth article, and it describes just how “crazy” the plan really is. It’s no Utopia. It’s a totalitarian, Orwellian hell, where the 20,000 residents will have their lives and their rights dictated by NewVistas corporate overlords. Read the VT Digger article:
http://vtdigger.org/2016/06/05/man-with-a-…
Don your tin foil hats… the world is about to end and we are the chosen ones who will survive in our little cities until the space ship to our special heaven arrives! Oh… and while you’re here, you need to give NewVistas all of your money and possessions and be a slave to MY community. It’s God’s wish, you know… You don’t want me to make you drink this Kool-Aid, do you???
This is my dream since a child! AGod bless a David Hall for his faithful service.To have a community of economic,eco friendly,and Christians to live,work,play, and worship with is a blessing beyond compare! I desire to devote my mortal life existence yo being a “Fisher of men” for this community! Vermont is the perfect location as the prophet Joseph Smith declared. God will see to it that the required permits are approved and that it may come into frutration…Glory be to GOD!
My dream since a child! To have a community of Christians to live,work,play and worship with! God will bless David Hall for his faithfulness in following the Prophet Joseph Smith’s detailed plans for the Vermont city of Zion and He will acquire the necessary permits. This I know! I desire to devote my mortal life to being a “Fisher of men” in development of this purpose.
Just what VT needs…a cult-city of 20,000 Mormons ruled by NewVistas’ corporate overlords whose ultimate goal is to increase our small state’s population to 20 million.