Landgrove's Halloween Party Has a New Host This Year, and the Inn Keeps Opening Its Doors Wider

"Bruce Haupt wanted to let us know that the Inn is hosting the Halloween Party this year."

That is the whole entry under Visitors & Public Comments in the draft minutes of the Landgrove Select Board's October 8, 2026 meeting. It sits between approval of the September minutes and a treasury report. It isn't the kind of line that makes the paper. In Landgrove, though, it signals a shift in which building the town gathers in.

The Haupt family bought the property on Landgrove Road in 2025 and renamed it The Landgrove. Their stated plan was to grow three parts of the business at once: the inn, the restaurant and the art workshops. A year later, the changes that matter most to the people who live nearby are small ones. There's a dinner table you can reserve on a Friday night, a studio table you can book for a day, and now the venue for one of the town's oldest traditions.

Halloween Has Always Been One of Three

Landgrove's shared calendar is short. According to the town's 2018 annual report, the Landgrove Community Club runs three town-wide events each year: Green Up, Halloween and the July 4th Party. That year's report credited the club with adding something new to Halloween, a printed map of the homes open to trick-or-treaters. The writer described each event as having "elements that work easily from year to year" and as "ripe for improvement."

The 2026 party has a new host. Neither the selectboard minutes nor the Inn's website gives a date, start time or format yet, so details will come through the usual town channels. One of the three events that define the town's year will take place inside a building that, for most of the last 25 years, mainly served visitors who drove in for a workshop and drove home.

A Building Long Built for People From Away

That history explains why this year's host matters. Tom and Maureen Checchia bought the property in 2000, named it The Landgrove Inn, and built it into a regional retreat for artists through the InView Center for the Arts. The post-and-beam studio was built in 2009. Since then the program has grown to more than 30 workshops a year, usually with 8 to 15 students, taught by artists from around the country and abroad.

The program worked, and it still does. The studio's current page describes it as "the only place in New England where you can stay, eat, and create under one roof." Workshop students get three meals a day in the restaurant as part of their package. The model was full immersion: you came for several days and the Inn took care of everything.

For someone who lives nearby, that model had a limitation. An $800 watercolor workshop with five nights of lodging isn't something a neighbor drops into. The Inn's FAQ says local participants must buy the full workshop meal package. Locals who would rather skip it can join a waitlist, and spaces are confirmed 60 days before the workshop based on availability.

The changes since 2025 have come in smaller pieces.

The Smaller Doors

There are now three ways in that don't require booking a five-night stay.

• A dinner table, Friday through Tuesday. VildaHaus, the restaurant, seats dinner from 5:00 to 7:30 p.m. and opens tables to the public Friday through Tuesday, depending on event bookings. Reservations go through Resy or by phone at 802-824-6673, and the restaurant posts its latest menus on Instagram. The kitchen describes its food as seasonal, drawing on Vermont, New England and international flavors, with menus that change regularly. One part of the Inn's own site still says the restaurant is open seven nights a week in summer and fall. The Friday-to-Tuesday schedule on the homepage is more recent, so check availability before you drive over.
• A studio table for the day. The new Studio Days program rents a table in the post-and-beam studio from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. for $25. You bring your own materials and your own project, whether that's painting, drawing, sewing, writing or anything else. A seat in a workshop costs $800, so this is the first way into the studio that's priced for an ordinary Tuesday. Dates are limited and booked online.
• The events calendar. The Inn's activities page says neighbors and friends are welcome at Inn events. The studio page says it also hosts yoga retreats and writing workshops, with an open-ended invitation: "if it requires gathering people together, we can host it in our Studio."

That last line is the clearest statement of the new approach, and the Halloween party is the first town event to take the Inn up on it.

Less visible changes point the same way. A November 2025 announcement from the hospitality software company Mews said the Inn had moved from a manual reservations process, decades old, to online booking with integrated payments. It also said Bruce Haupt planned to add point-of-sale and event-management tools later. That kind of system matters when a building is expected to handle a dinner reservation, a $25 day pass and a town party in the same week.

What the Rest of October Looks Like From Landgrove Road

Starting tomorrow, the studio's foliage programming and the town's road work run in parallel.

At the Inn

The Foliage & Palette week works like a version of Studio Days for overnight guests: open studio time with no instructor or set curriculum. The Inn has already scheduled a 2027 workshop season, so the larger immersive program isn't going anywhere. The smaller options sit alongside it.

On the Roads

The same October 8 meeting covered work anyone who drives Landgrove Road will notice.

1. Guardrails go in October 19. The installation is funded by a 2026 Small Scale Local Highway Safety Improvement Program grant.
2. Resurfacing will cover more road than first planned. The minutes say the per-yard price will likely let the town add another mile. That would put the work on Landgrove Road from Jaquith down Buffum Hill at potentially close to 2.5 miles. The board signed the scope-of-work contract with Hunter at the same meeting.
3. A new plow truck is on the way. The purchase agreement is signed, payment was submitted, and lettering is under consideration "before the cold weather arrives."
4. Grading is racing the leaves. In the minutes' words, the road crew "has been grading and trying to beat the falling leaves."
5. The Cody Road and Old County West intersection got a trim. Branches were cut back so the sign is easier to see. More trimming on the west side of Cody Road and a yield sign just south of the intersection were recommended.

The Trail Work Up the Hill Is Finished

The Inn itself sits on 25 acres in the Green Mountain National Forest, according to the Mews announcement. Up in that forest, two Green Mountain Club projects on the Long Trail and Appalachian Trail wrapped up this season. According to the Green Mountain Club's August 25 alert, a new bridge just north of Peru Peak Shelter is complete and open. The club's trail updates page also reports that a new bridge over Homer Stone Brook, just north of Little Rock Pond, is finished. Both crossings are clear for the last weeks of foliage hiking.

After the Leaves

The Inn's activities page has winter suggestions but doesn't promise groomed trails on the property. It points guests to nearby alpine areas, to cross-country skiing at the Southern Vermont Arts Center and local preserves, and to guided full-moon snowshoe hikes. The closest alpine date on the calendar is Bromley's projected opening day of November 27, 2026. Bromley's Mountain Adventure Park closes for the season after this weekend; its posted schedule runs weekends through October 12.

The Inn hasn't published a full December-to-March calendar yet, and VildaHaus has no posted winter schedule. Between the foliage studio weeks and the ski season, the dates set so far are a $25 studio table, dinner Friday through Tuesday, a portrait workshop starting November 3, and a town Halloween party whose date the Inn has yet to announce.

For more on the two towns that share this valley, see our Peru and Landgrove neighborhood guide and our Landgrove page.

At Wohler Realty Group, we track the select board minutes, studio calendars and road schedules that shape a year in Landgrove, down to the October 19 guardrail install. If you'd like to talk about this valley, from the Inn on Landgrove Road to the homes around it, contact us.