[B]URLINGTON — The city’s business community is cranking up the pressure on city councilors to approve a predevelopment agreement that would pave the way for a $220 million redevelopment of the Burlington Town Center mall and transform downtown.
Developer Don Sinex wants to erect two buildings, the tallest in the state, where the mall is now that would hold a mix of offices, housing and retail space as well as an expanded parking garage. The project would also restore through traffic to Pine and St. Paul streets downtown, with improved streetscapes abutting the new edifices.
The city would contribute $21 million for public amenities through “tax increment financing,” meaning the use of money from anticipated increases in property tax revenue tied to the project.
A vote on the predevelopment agreement is expected at the council’s next meeting, which is Monday. However, several councilors appear uncomfortable with the timeline being pushed by Sinex and Mayor Miro Weinberger, saying it doesn’t allow them enough time to review the agreement and get public feedback.
Sinex appeared anxious this week to have some form of documented commitment from the city to support his plan to reshape downtown. Without an agreement in hand, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to recruit investors and business partners, he said.
“It is not an easy task to bring $200 million to Burlington, Vermont. People don’t know Burlington … and we have to have enough of a road map where at least people say, ‘It’s worth the investment,’” he said at Monday’s council meeting.
Approving the predevelopment agreement is the first of many regulatory approvals the project needs from city officials, the council and citizen review boards. The $21 million in tax increment financing would need voter approval and is expected to be on the November ballot.
Councilors heard from business luminaries, who came out in force at Monday’s meeting to urge them to act expeditiously in approving the Town Center redevelopment.
“Don’t miss this moment,” exhorted Ernie Pomerleau, the Burlington real estate mogul, adding that it’s rare for a developer to be willing to spend that much in the Queen City.
“This project will be a vast improvement over what’s there already,” said Pat Robins, a key player in building Church Street Marketplace in the late 1970s. The marketplace officially opened in 1981 — just in time for the city’s new mayor, Bernie Sanders, to take credit, Robins joked.
“In my view, we should push this through and get this done,” said Bill Truax, an architect who led the development of Church Street Marketplace.
Earlier Monday, the Burlington Business Association held a news conference with Sinex, the mayor and business leaders, where they praised the project’s potential to create jobs and badly needed housing.
Powerful institutions in Burlington have given the project a boost, including the University of Vermont Medical Center, which announced a tentative agreement to lease office space, and Champlain College, which has asked to lease more than 100 housing units for its students. Sinex has said more institutional partnerships are in the works.
Supporters from outside the business community joined the BBA chorus, including Local Motion, which promotes biking and walking; the Champlain Housing Trust, which works to build affordable housing; and AARP Vermont, which advocates for seniors.
“If there’s a place in Burlington for density, this is it,” said Kate McCarthy, with the Vermont Natural Resources Council.
McCarthy said the environmental advocacy group supports the project because the added density in downtown would cut down on suburban sprawl, a theme echoed by many who support the project.
Councilors, residents voice concerns
At a Wednesday meeting, city councilors will go over the predevelopment agreement in detail with the attorneys who drafted it. The agreement sets out broadly what the project will include, the required zoning changes — to allow for the height — and the construction schedule and conditions and expectations for the public investment.
Several councilors expressed frustration with the window they’ve been given to review the agreement and said they wished more information was available from Sinex about how the project would operate once built.
“We’re being asked to make some commitments before we have all the information we need,” said City Council President Jane Knodell, P-Central District, in an earlier interview.
Councilors and residents raised concerns at Monday’s meeting about the height of the buildings — expected to be 14 and 10 stories — their impact on city infrastructure, the shadows they would cast, how they might alter the skyline and whether Sinex will adhere to the standards necessary to earn a LEED Gold certification for environmentally friendly development.
The unfolding fraud scandal in the Northeast Kingdom, which left major economic revitalization projects stalled and unlikely to be completed, is casting a shadow over the downtown redevelopment and leaving councilors anxious to go through this project with a fine-toothed comb.
City Councilor Kurt Wright, R-Ward 4, said the news conferences with the mayor and others touting the project called to mind similar ones in the Northeast Kingdom with the governor and others promoting ambitious development projects that were ultimately too good to be true.
Wright said the city has had a “vigorous” vetting process to this point. And while he stopped short of comparing the two situations, he suggested the unbuilt projects in Newport and elsewhere are a stark reminder of the council’s oversight responsibility.
Sinex has already submitted to an 18-month public review process and said he has done his best to revise the project design in response to feedback from councilors and others.
He said he anticipates another eight to nine months to get all the necessary regulatory approvals. That should give ample opportunity for him to answer councilors’ remaining questions, he added.
“We’re not asking you to rush through anything,” Sinex said.
Affordable for whom?
Many Church Street business owners who spoke in favor of the new development said it would help their businesses by bringing hundreds of office workers and new residents downtown, especially during current lulls in foot traffic on weekdays and during the off season for tourists.
That would have the added benefit of scaring off undesirables, or at least making them less visible to those who gather on Church Street to spend money, according to several business owners who spoke at the meeting.
Kent Wood, who owns Fremeau Jewelers, said his largely female clientele frequently expresses being put off by the “public drunkenness and aggressive panhandling” that occur especially during the week when crowds are thinner.
“If we scare Don (Sinex) out of this project, what are we going to have if he leaves?” Wood asked the councilors.
Lisa Cannon, who sits on the board of Turning Point Center — a group that helps people recover from drug addiction — sees things quite differently.
“I’ve heard a couple of not-so-positive references to panhandlers and undesirable types of people,” she said. “Those folks aren’t going to go away because we build a beautiful building.”
The location of public transit, the Costello Courthouse and social services on Cherry Street, close to Church Street, makes it certain that poor people will always be part of downtown’s fabric, Cannon said.
That makes it necessary for public officials to be mindful of the less fortunate when considering a large-scale redevelopment there, she said. Cannon suggested officials consider how to ensure some new jobs from the project go to people in recovery from addiction.
The dynamic between business leaders’ hunger for economic revitalization and the needs of those who Cannon and others fear might be left out of that revitalization was on full display at the Burlington Business Association news conference Monday afternoon.
Roughly 50 feet from where Sinex and the mayor stood with CEOs and board members and their retinue, several panhandlers held signs and tried to corral their dogs, asking passers-by for charity.
One of them, Jerry Michie, who said he’s been homeless at times during his 11 years in Burlington, came over to listen to the suits discuss the city’s future. Afterward, Michie said he wished the city would spend more money on sheltering the homeless. He said he has friends who routinely struggle to find beds.
“Affordable housing here? Ain’t gonna happen,” Michie said, dismissing a core feature touted by proponents of the project.
The city’s inclusionary zoning ordinance will require that 54 of the 274 planned housing units be rented as affordable housing. That doesn’t mean subsidized housing, or that someone like Michie could afford to live there.
The ordinance requires only that Sinex rent those units — including utility costs — for 30 percent of the income of a household making 65 percent of the median household income for the region.
Translation: A one-bedroom affordable unit is likely to cost $1,000 a month.
That calculation is based on the median income level for Burlington in 2015 and an assumption in the ordinance that a one-bedroom unit is rented by a household with the income of 1.5 people.
Using those parameters, a 1.5-person household making 65 percent of the median income is earning just under $40,000 a year.