Kevin Cassese has made his first big move as the head coach at Virginia, hiring Vermont head coach Chris Feifs as his defensive coordinator and top assistant. Inside Lacrosse first reported the news Wednesday, after which Vermont issued a formal announcement.

Feifs has previous experience in the ACC, having served as North Carolina’s defensive coordinator under Joe Breschi when the Tar Heels won the national championship in 2016. He left after that season to become the head coach at Vermont, where in 10 seasons he led the Catamounts to a 78-59 record and America East championships in 2021 and 2022.

“Chris poured his heart and soul into the program,” athletic director Jeff Schulman said.

Feifs was named the America East Coach of the Year in 2023 after leading Vermont to a regular season conference title.

“I will look back at the past 10 years as the single greatest growth period of my life,” he said.

Now he’ll play a key role in remodeling Virginia’s defense in his likeness. The Cavaliers ranked 39th in Division I last season allowing 11.12 goals per game. They do boast one of the best close defensemen in the country in John Schroter, who will be a redshirt senior next season. The goalie position is uncertain after Virginia turned to Air Force transfer Jake Marek as the starter this year and Kyle Morris entered the transfer portal.

Virginia has moved swiftly since making the surprise decision to part ways with Lars Tiffany on May 18 and issuing a terse press release announcing the departure of a head coach who led the Cavaliers to national championships in 2019 and 2021 and the ACC championship this year. Eight days later, they elevated Cassese — an offensive coordinator with extensive previous head coaching experience at Lehigh — to head coach.

Eight days after that, Cassese has his top lieutenant.

MONTPELIER, Vt. (WCAX) – The state of Vermont wants more flexibility in how it charges for access to state parks.

Right now, fees are determined by location, size, and type of camping.

However, leaders say parking at state parks and ponds is seeing more foot traffic, and costs of maintaining them have gone up.

The Department of Forest Parks and Recreation wants to be able to price campsites and day-use parks more dynamically.

There’s no proposal to raise fees now, but if approved, some state parks could see increased fees depending on their popularity, the date, and location.

“It is trying to find that balance of covering costs, providing the service parkgoers have come to expect and making sure we aren’t creating unintentional barriers for people who want to enjoy our fabulous state lakes,” said Julie Moore, Vermont Natural Resources Secretary.

She adds that last year’s Vermont ‘Parks Forever’ initiative, which allows for people who receive three squares benefits free entry to parks, meant an additional 30,000 visits last year.

This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.

A long-awaited housing development that could bring hundreds of new apartments to a series of empty lots in Burlington’s South End neighborhood is beginning to come together.

The first phase of the major public-private deal, called the South End Coordinated Redevelopment Project, got official sign-off from the Burlington City Council last month. The project’s backers have also scored key funding commitments from Treasurer Mike Pieciak’s office and state housing funding agencies. 

The project on Lakeside Avenue is the beginning of “a neighborhood being born out of a big parking lot,” Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak told city councilors in May.

City officials and developers hope the project could eventually include over a thousand homes, making it one of the largest developments in Vermont – and putting a considerable dent in the Queen City’s housing shortage. Regional planners estimate that Burlington needs to add between 3,500 and 10,500 homes by 2050 to get the housing market to a healthy state. 

The development is possible, in part, because of a 2023 zoning change in the formerly industrial area that allows for some of the densest housing development in the state, according to local planners. 

A rendering of the South End Coordinated Redevelopment Project, courtesy of Andrew Foley, development director at Jonathan Rose Companies. Credit: GOA Architecture.

The South End project’s backers include Champlain College, Champlain Housing Trust and Ride Your Bike LLC, the investors behind the nearby Hula coworking campus. They have brought on Jonathan Rose Companies, an affordable housing developer with projects from New York to California, as the lead developer. The South End project is the company’s first in Vermont.

The development agreement signed by city councilors in May greenlights the South End project’s first 204 units, estimated to cost roughly $100 million. 

Per Burlington’s inclusionary zoning policy and state rules, at least 20% of the first round of apartments will be set aside as affordable. But the developers hope to secure enough funding to allow them to earmark a third of the 204 apartments with income restrictions, said Andrew Foley, director of development at Jonathan Rose Companies, in an interview. The development agreement offers the developers reduced city fees if the affordable units are priced even more modestly than required.

The lion’s share of the new apartments will be studios and one-bedrooms, Foley said. The building would include common social spaces for neighbors to gather, he added.  

Like any large-scale housing project, the developers of the South End apartments are piecing together financing from a wide array of sources. They recently scored an $8 million low-interest loan from Pieciak’s 10% for Vermont program, along with a $6.7 million award from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board to support 67 affordable apartments – including 10 reserved for people experiencing homelessness. 

To build out new roads – along with wastewater connections and stormwater infrastructure meant to cut down on sewer overflows into nearby Lake Champlain – city officials are going after funding from a new state program. The Community and Housing Infrastructure Program, a tax-increment financing tool created by the Legislature last year, would allow the city and the developers to borrow the funds needed to build out the infrastructure against the development’s future property tax revenue.