In 2005, the various commissions in the town of Middlebury, Conn., approved a development called Ridgewood. This massive project was slated to add 326 "well-appointed and spacious luxury residences" on 314 acres, a nine-hole private golf course, private cinema, two clubhouses with a fitness center and many other amenities.
The faux mansions were laughably billed as comprising "a classic New England country village with undeniable charm and convenient access to major highways" by the developer, whose headquarters sits in Valhalla, N.Y.
The perfect sprawl recipe: fake charm in an instant fake "country village" located near an interstate, built by outsiders taking orders from the Norse god Odin.
There were, according to the 2000 census, 6,451 people in Middlebury. These new homes, in the unlikely case that they all sell, will add 1,200 more people to the town, expanding Middlebury's population by 20 percent.
The only plausible explanation of how this monstrosity was approved by the various town commissions is that Odin put LSD or fairy dust in the Middlebury water supply. No sentient adult would fall for the brochure copy about "classic New England country village," would they?
Yet these same adults also fell for the line about how Ridgewood would be completed by 2006.
It is now three years past deadline and the faux village is only half finished. Mountains of dirt, rocks, dust, clear-cut trees and equipment sit in the autumn sunlight in the heart of this formerly quiet burg.
Adding insult to injury, the developers now want the town to pay for the golf course. According to a story in the Waterbury Republican-American, until this demand is met, the developers have all but "disappeared."
They have, no doubt, moved on to another "charming New England village" in another community.
In all accounts of this dismal failure—this all-too-predictable dismal failure—the cause is cited as "due in large part to the economy."
This is, of course, hogwash. It's due to the short-sighted local officials who were conned by brochure copy.
I can already predict how this will play out. The original opponents of Ridgewood, portrayed as wild-eyed anti-business zealots (let's not forget, however, that Middlebury is where former three-term state governor John Rowland resides), will not be accorded the respect due to people who were right when it mattered. These people will continue to be ignored and the town will bleed cash for the next several decades to make a silk purse out of this sow's ear that should never have been foisted on it.
It is upon such slapstick scams as Ridgewood that America's broken economy was built. Be it a new "lifestyle center," "age-restricted subdivision," "luxury condo complex" or "classic country village" and be it in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire or Maine, the scam follows the same broken paradigm: short-term profit for a few people in Valhalla, long-term disaster for the community where it is built.
The old paradigm is broken. It does not work. It has never worked and it will never work, no matter how many times it is repeated.
Speculative ventures sold as panaceas to panting officials who hold the doors of the chicken coop open for the wolves will only lead to the ransacking and ruination of communities.
On the local level, generally speaking—at least in New England—party affiliations rarely come into play. In my town, the Democrats finally got a majority on the Town Council and zoning board and they promptly held the chicken coop door open to a shopping mall ("lifestyle center") developer. Disaster, predictably, has followed.
