Is Chester’s long-delayed sidewalk project in the Depot finally a go?

By Shawn Cunningham
© 2025 Telegraph Publishing LLC

Children in second grade at Chester-Andover Elementary today had not been born when the Town received an $800,000 grant to build a sidewalk from Bargefrede Road at the lower portion of Depot Street to Town Hall. But after an eight-year delay that doubled the project’s cost, the town has received an additional $908,000 grant to move forward with it.

The project included widening the existing sidewalk, replacing it with concrete, installing granite curbing and adding a grass strip between the sidewalk and the road. That grass strip has been designed to feature smaller, pedestrian scale street lights.

In October 2017, then-Executive Assistant Julie Hance announced that the town’s $200,000 match would come from the capital budget bringing the total for the project to $1 million. But the last paragraph in The Telegraph’s 2017 story unknowingly hinted at the trouble that lay ahead saying, “Once the project documents are finalized, the town can take the first step of putting out a request for qualifications from design engineers. That will probably be early next year.”

While engineering and other work went ahead, the sticking point — year after year — was getting the Vermont Railway to sign off on the work t0 create a pedestrian crossing at the tracks at the Depot. Ironically, the railroad right-of-way is owned by the state of Vermont, which leases it to Vermont Railway. The state also made the grant for the sidewalk through its “Bike/Ped” program. For whatever reason the Railway withheld its assent until this year — as cost estimates increased — before allowing the project to move forward.

According to Hance, who is now the town manager, the town, the state and the railroad have reached an agreement on the project and the paperwork is “out for signatures.” While the new funds will cover the project as envisioned in 2017, Hance says that there have been questions about whether it makes more sense to take the street lighting component out in favor of additional sidewalk paving. She intends to put that question to the Select Board at its Oct. 1 meeting.

The VTrans Project Factsheet, which has been updated repeatedly over the years, now shows a scheduled bid advertisement in the winter of 2026 followed by a contract award in the spring and a construction target of spring-fall 2026.

“Now that the town has received additional funding, and I am being told that the right-of-way agreement is circulating for signature, we are optimistic that the Depot Street sidewalk project will go to bid this winter for construction next summer,” Hance said on Tuesday.