Rural Vermont town waits as campus changes hands again
Florida evangelist Tommie Zito has agreed to buy the former Green Mountain College campus in Poultney, Vermont, from whiskey entrepreneur Raj Bhakta, according to the Wall Street Journal. Zito plans to turn the abandoned 115-acre property into a Christian university he calls Z University, describing it as a “Christ-centered institution dedicated to educating, equipping, and sending leaders throughout America and the nations of the world.”
Bhakta, a former contestant on NBC’s “The Apprentice,” bought the campus in 2020 at a 77% discount to its appraised value shortly after Green Mountain College closed amid declining enrollment. He initially pursued a luxury resort development with condos, a restaurant, a spa, and a microdistillery. After struggling to secure state regulatory approval — the Vermont agency twice labeled his application incomplete — Bhakta pulled the plug on the project in September. State officials later alleged that he stored spirits on campus without a license and renovated his house, which is on the state’s Register of Historic Places, without required approvals. Bhakta has blamed Vermont’s regulatory process for grinding his project to a halt.
Earlier this year, Bhakta said he wanted to give the campus away free of charge to an institution aligned “with the vision of the revival of the United States, Western civilization and Christendom through faith-based education.” After a monthslong search with several finalists, he instead agreed to sell the property to Zito. Zito declined to share the purchase price and said the deal has not yet been fully completed.
Zito, an international itinerant evangelist based in Florida, said he hopes the university can house 850 students. He plans to establish a college of evangelism as well as programs in business, government, and music. “I don’t know that much about building a university,” he said. Zito does not plan to move to Vermont right away.
Word quickly spread around Poultney as locals searched for information about the new proprietor. Devon Fowler, a neighbor of Bhakta who has been critical of the whiskey entrepreneur’s operation, said he is skeptical that anything will materialize soon. “If something materializes in five years, I’ll be surprised,” Fowler told the Journal. He described Bhakta and Zito as a strange pairing. “I don’t understand how the church is going to get wrapped up with a whiskey maker,” he said.
For the roughly 3,000 residents of Poultney, the sale is yet another twist in a saga that began when Green Mountain College closed its doors in 2019. The closure of small colleges across the U.S. has left towns with acres of quads and lecture halls that are difficult to repurpose. The fate of the campus has been a major concern for the community, which has watched the property sit largely unused for seven years.