[B]urlington’s Development Review Board got an early look at plans for the second phase of development proposed on lakefront property occupied by Burlington College.
Developer Eric Farrell presented drawings and specifications for renovation of the former orphanage on North Avenue to the board Tuesday night.
Farrell has agreed to buy the orphanage building from Burlington College in 2016 for $2 million. He previously purchased 27 acres of Burlington College’s 33-acre lot for approximately $7.6 million Feb. 2. The purchase helped to alleviate some of the college’s debt burden. As a result of financial problems at the school last year, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges put Burlington College on academic probation.
Farrell hopes to build 500 units of senior, affordable and market-rate housing, including 21 single-family homes on one of the parcels.
If the purchase of the orphanage is completed, Farrell plans to turn the four-story building into approximately 63 apartments. The apartment units will be studio and one-bedroom rentals, according to state documents.
Burlington College, which occupies the orphanage building, will continue to use the 1940s south wing addition that houses many of its administrative offices as well as classrooms, according to documents filed with the board.
The main orphanage building and the Burlington College-occupied addition, would be sealed off from one another, and Burlington College students who are not residents of the apartment complex would not have access to that area of the building, Farrell said.
“The only agreement I have with the college is that if they have students who want to rent the units, I’ll give them first dibs, and that’s the deal,” Farrell said.
Parking concerns
Brad Rabinowitz, a member of the Development Review Board, said he was concerned about creating a clear separation between the college and the apartment complex on the property.
“Everything outside is college, college, college, the only thing that’s not college is the parking lot that you said you don’t want to build,” Rabinowitz said to Farrell.
T.J. Boyle and Associates, the project’s landscape architecture firm, included a parking lot in the scheme, but it lacks details. Because the apartment complex is in a neighborhood residential area, the developer is required to provide two parking spaces per unit, or 126 parking spaces for the project. These are not included in the plans. Burlington College has a 73-space parking waiver from the city, but that will be reduced to 56 spaces when the college footprint is reduced. (Department of Planning and Development sketch plan review is here.)
“Because I want to get permits for the orphanage right now, I have to satisfy the parking requirements, so I showed (the Burlington Development Review Board) a parking lot and where I would put it, as if that was the only thing we ever did, and my hope is that at some point with these other permits in the future then maybe we won’t have to build the parking lot,” Farrell said. “Because they’d rather not see me build a surface parking lot near the street, as a matter of principle, and I don’t want to build it, either, but I do need a parking lot to get my permits.”
David White, director of the Burlington Department of Planning and Zoning, said the plan presented Tuesday does not include enough on-site parking to meet the current requirements of the city’s zoning ordinance.
“The ordinance does allow for a waiver for up to 50 percent of that requirement by the Development Review Board based on a parking management plan, however as I recall as discussed last night the project would still be short of the zoning requirement,” White said. “Because this is a pre-application, sketch plan review process, the applicant is free to go back and redesign their project as necessary to fit the requirements and address any issues/comments offered by the board before making any formal application for a permit.”
White said his department would typically encourage Farrell to meet 50 percent of the requirement and then seek a 50 percent waiver from the Development Review Board for the remainder of the spaces.
Farrell said that when the renovation of the orphanage is completed and ready for occupancy, he will build a parking lot in the location shown on the plan. The parking lot would take about a month to build, he said.
Due to the Development Review Board’s quasi-judicial capacity, the board’s chairman, Austin Hart, said it would not be appropriate for him to comment on a pending application.
Affordable housing and historic register
The June 10 priority housing project worksheet, prepared by the state Natural Resources Board, shows that the proposed project qualifies as mixed income housing in accordance with Act 250. At least 16 of the 63 units being constructed, or 25 percent, will be rented to households earning at or less than 80 percent of the area median income and the rent on those 16 units will not exceed 30 percent of the area median income.
Farrell also this month presented the sketch plan to the city’s Conservation Board, which expressed concern about the balance between open space and development in the rest of the 27 acres that he purchased. Farrell said that he hopes to arrive at a consensus this summer on the balance for those lands.
Farrell said Wednesday that he is not willing to speak about his plans for the property until he, the Vermont Land Trust, the Champlain Housing Trust and the city of Burlington finish engaging the public in potential site designs under a Feb. 20 memorandum of understanding. The planning process should finish by mid- to late-July, he said.
Some of the renovations to the orphanage building include a common laundry room and a fitness center on the ground floor available for use by the building’s residents, as well as an indoor bike storage room with at least 63 bike racks. Farrell said he expects many of the student and non-student residents to ride bikes.
“The non-student occupants are going to be of a fairly young demographic, and we think they will live in an apartment that’s close to downtown and they’ll all be riding bikes,” Farrell said. The majority of occupants in another property he owns in the area are young professionals who work downtown.
Only the first floor plan was included in Tuesday’s presentation before the Development Review Board, but there were several illustrations of what the outside of the building will look like from every angle.
Farrell says he plans to obtain the permits for the orphanage building by the end of August and start construction Oct. 1. It should be completed by next summer, Farrell said.
“I don’t think there’s a lot of challenges to accomplishing what we want to accomplish,” he said.
Bob Duncan, co-founder of the Duncan Wisniewski architecture firm, also attended Tuesday’s presentation. Farrell said he chose the firm because he has worked with them before and they are “very excellent at what they do.”
Duncan Wisniewski is developing plans for the renovation of the former Catholic diocese orphanage.
Originally called the Providence Orphan Asylum, the North Avenue orphanage was built in 1884, according to the State Register of Historic Places archive. The asylum replaced a smaller orphanage at the corner of South Prospect Street and Pearl Street, according to the archive.
In 1983, the Roman Catholic Diocese moved many of its administrative offices into the building and the building stopped providing care for children. The diocese sold the 32 acres of lakefront land and the orphanage building to Burlington College for $10 million Dec. 31, 2010, when Jane Sanders, wife of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, was president of the college. The diocese needed the money to pay a $20 million settlement for 26 priest sex abuse cases. Sanders resigned as president shortly after the sale and the college was unable to raise the money to keep up with payments for the purchase, accumulating over $11 million in debt.
