The Jeffersonville Granary Isn't a Finished Story Yet

Drive down Route 15 through Jeffersonville and you'll pass the building at 4968 without much reason to slow down anymore. There's an ice cream sign, a few cars in the lot, maybe someone walking out with a cone. It reads as settled, like whatever was going to happen to that old grain building already happened.

It hasn't. The Jeffersonville Granary is still an active redevelopment, not a wrapped-up success story. The state put more money into it five months ago. A chunk of the building is still looking for a tenant. And a piece of the original plan, a bike path meant to connect the property straight to the rest of Cambridge's trail network, has never been confirmed as built. What looks like a finished ice cream shop is actually one layer of a project that's still being assembled in real time.

A Building With Three Working Lives Before This One

The McGovern family ran this property for close to a century before any of that. It started as a livestock feed store in the 1920s. In the 1950s they added the grain tower and mill that still give the building its name and its silhouette. By the 1970s and 80s the McGoverns had shifted to plumbing and dairy equipment repair, including servicing the refrigerated bulk tanks that state regulations began requiring dairies to use.

Then it sat empty for about fifteen years. Not repurposed, not demolished, just idle on a stretch of Route 15 that a lot of Jeffersonville traffic passes without a second look.

Ben Waterman, who runs Waterman Orchards in Johnson with his wife Stacey, bought the property in March 2022 for $350,000. He set up a development company, Lamoille Build LLC, to handle the work, which turned out to include a state-mandated Brownfields cleanup for contamination left over from the building's industrial decades. That cleanup wasn't finished until September 2023, more than a year after the purchase closed.

The Business That Was Supposed to Anchor It Wasn't the One That Did

Here's the part that's easy to miss if you only know the building as it looks today. When Waterman was marketing the space to tenants in 2023, the plan had a different centerpiece. A bakery and cafe was lined up as the anchor tenant, one that intended to mill its own flour from grain grown by local farms, a nod to the building's original agricultural purpose. Waterman talked about wanting to honor that legacy specifically through a tenant who'd process food the way the building once processed grain.

The leasing timeline he published called for opening by May 2024. That didn't happen. Old Tower Ice Cream, the shop that's actually running there now, didn't open until the summer of 2025, more than a year past the original target. The bakery concept isn't mentioned in any of the coverage of the building once it opened. Whatever happened to that plan, the building's public identity ended up built around ice cream instead of bread.

None of this is a knock on how the project turned out. It's a reminder that redevelopment plans on paper and redevelopment plans on the ground are two different things, and the gap between them here was more than a year.

"We plan to revitalize the commercial property and renew its agricultural legacy."

That's the line Waterman used to describe his intentions for the site back in 2023. The legacy part held. The specific vehicle for it changed.

What's There Now, and What's Still For Lease

As of today, the building holds three things worth knowing about if you live nearby.

Old Tower Ice Cream churns its ice cream on site, using milk and cream from a dairy in town run by Greg and Kathy Beaudoin, along with blueberries grown at the Watermans' own orchard in Johnson. It's got a jukebox, a vintage arcade cabinet, candy sold by the pound, and seating that makes it more of a hangout than a walk-up window.

The Granary Gallery occupies another part of the space and rotates local-artist shows on a regular schedule, fiber art and floral installations being one recent example.

The Burger Barn food truck still parks on the property, which it was doing before any of this redevelopment started. That continuity matters more than it might seem. The rebuilt Granary didn't erase what was already working on that lot, it built around it.

What's less clear is how much room is left. When Waterman was leasing up the space in 2023, he described roughly 2,500 square feet still available in the 7,000-square-foot renovated building. That was before the Granary Gallery signed on, so the real number today is probably smaller, but nothing public confirms exactly how much smaller or what kind of business Waterman is hoping to land next. If you've been wondering whether there's room for one more shop in that building, the honest answer is probably, though nobody's saying what for.

The State Just Wrote Another Check

In April 2026, the Vermont Economic Development Authority announced a $143,045 loan to Old Tower Ice Cream specifically for further improvements to the Jeffersonville Granary. That loan was one of 32 projects VEDA funded that quarter across ten Vermont counties, part of $13.8 million in total investment for the period covering January through March 2026.

The size of the loan relative to VEDA's other awards that quarter is telling on its own. It's a fraction of the multi-million-dollar loans going to larger industrial projects elsewhere in the state, which suggests this is targeted, specific work rather than a second major buildout. But it also means the building is still receiving capital nearly four years after Waterman bought it. This isn't a project that finished and moved on to the next thing. It's still being worked on.

The Rail Trail Piece Nobody's Confirmed Yet

One part of the original 2023 site plan hasn't shown up in anything published since. Waterman's plan called for demolishing the building's north section to make way for green space and a roughly 300-foot connector path, built over the old railbed that once served the granary, linking the property directly into Cambridge's broader trail network. He described the goal plainly at the time, calling it a "gateway to Jeffersonville," and said he was coordinating with the town's trails committee to make it happen.

Whether that specific connector has actually been built isn't something confirmed in anything published since. It may have happened quietly. It may still be pending. Either way, it's worth watching if you use the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail regularly and want to know whether a direct link into this stretch of Route 15 ever materializes.

What This Means If You Live Down the Road

The building most people in Jeffersonville see today is an ice cream shop with a good jukebox and a gallery next door. That's accurate as far as it goes. But the fuller picture is a redevelopment that changed its anchor tenant mid-plan, ran more than a year behind its own schedule, is still pulling in state financing five months ago, and has at least one physical piece, the trail connector, that was announced and never confirmed finished.

None of that makes the Granary a cautionary tale. It makes it a building worth checking back on rather than filing away as done. If a new tenant fills that remaining square footage, or if a bike path quietly appears behind the building connecting to the rail trail, it won't be a surprise to anyone who's been paying attention. It'll be the next visible step in a project that's been unfolding in stages since 2022.

Jill Richardson has spent more than twenty years watching buildings like this one change hands and change purpose across Jeffersonville, Cambridge, and the surrounding towns, the kind of local detail that doesn't show up on a listing sheet but shapes how a place actually lives day to day. If you're curious about what's happening in your own corner of the village, or thinking ahead to a move in the area, reach out to Jill Richardson to talk it through, or request a free consultation and home valuation.