MIDDLEBURY — The Middlebury Development Review Board on Sept. 24 unanimously endorsed Champlain Valley Equipment’s (CVE) plan to build a new, 4,500-square-foot maintenance building on its property at 453 Exchange St. 
The new building will give CVE technicians a safer and roomier location in which to service the company’s largest agricultural and construction vehicles.
Champlain Valley Equipment — one of Vermont’s largest dealers in farm, construction and recreational vehicles and equipment — has stores in Middlebury, St. Albans, Derby and Berlin. The company employs 10 technicians who service the equipment it sells.
Typically, half of those technicians are on the road during the growing season, servicing agricultural equipment at farm locations, according to CVE Service Manager Rick Viens. The rest of the year, those technicians are working at CVE facilities.
The company’s existing maintenance shops are having a tougher time providing enough space for employees to work on the largest vehicles that CVE sells and services. Company owner and CEO Brian Carpenter pointed specifically to the biggest self-propelled forage harvesters and multi-mount mower set-ups (such as the Krone Big M) that can be more than 30 feet wide.
“It’s been an emerging need as equipment gets larger and our business continues to grow,” Carpenter said of company’s quest for a larger maintenance facility.
The more spacious quarters are also expected to improve safety conditions for workers, Carpenter added. The maintenance building is to be equipped with an overhead jib crane.
The project will be sited west of the existing CVE building, near the railroad tracks. Current trailer storage on the CVE property will be removed to accommodate the new structure, a shed-style steel building.
“It will fit in with our existing look,” Carpenter said.
If state permitting and construction go smoothly, Carpenter expects the maintenance facility will be up and running this winter.
Reporter John Flowers is at [email protected].