[B]URLINGTON — The city has dissolved its arrangement with a group that was expected to redevelop the former Moran coal plant on the waterfront into stores, event space and possibly offices, the mayor announced Thursday.
The project was a key piece of the city’s plans for its waterfront.
“Clearly we’re not going to fully succeed with this historic effort of rebuilding the northern waterfront without resolving the future of the Moran building,” Mayor Miro Weinberger said.
Burlington signed a memorandum of understanding in 2014 with New Moran Inc. giving the nonprofit company an exclusive opportunity to build a mixed-use development in the city-owned former industrial edifice.
The proposal was to combine historic preservation with the highest modern standards for environmental building.
Also in 2014, city voters approved $9.6 million in tax incentives for waterfront development, with $6.3 million slated for the Moran project. The other projects are either completed — those include a skate park — or well on their way. Groundbreaking on a sailing center is expected this year, and a marina recently received final approval from the City Council.
Burlington and New Moran were supposed to have a final development agreement signed by March 2015. On Thursday, more than a year after that deadline passed, the two parties released a joint statement saying “a feasible project has yet to be established.”
Weinberger said the agreement is being dissolved largely because New Moran failed to secure commitments from long-term tenants that would make the project viable, and because the company was no longer working with an experienced development team.
Those two issues are not unrelated. As VTDigger reported last week, the city asked real estate firm Redstone Commercial Group, which had a development services agreement with New Moran, to step aside because a project it was working on in Winooski was courting the same tenant: the owners of Higher Ground, in South Burlington.
Redstone was the experienced development team that city officials wanted to see New Moran working with, and Higher Ground was the type of tenant that, had it signed a letter of intent with New Moran, likely would have given the city confidence that the project could work.
Instead, New Moran’s deal with the city is being replaced with a consent agreement that gives the nonprofit until Nov. 11 to deliver what the city deems a viable project.
Breathing new life into the former industrial site has bedeviled city leaders for 30 years since the coal plant ceased operations in 1986, Weinberger said. He praised the efforts of New Moran as having come closest to succeeding, adding that it’s worth giving the nonprofit one last chance to get something done.
At the same time, the city will explore all its options for redeveloping the Moran plant, including partnering with a new developer or demolishing the structure and starting fresh.
The $6.3 million in tax breaks can be put toward either option, according to the mayor. The measure voters approved in 2014 calls for a “mixed-use redevelopment of the building with a focus on arts and event space, local foods, and green energy innovation” at the Moran plant.
However, it also says that if the mayor and the City Council determine the project “cannot reasonably be accomplished,” then the tax breaks can be put toward demolition costs.
To that end, the city is going to start analyzing the environmental and historic preservation challenges that would accompany leveling the building.
“I don’t think it’s ever been done in a serious way,” Weinberger said of that analysis. “There have been speculative (cost) estimates in the past that are very old now. … It has been put in the millions of dollars in the past.”
Weinberger, who has long said the city would demolish the Moran building if this redevelopment didn’t pan out, acknowledged critics that argue new environmental standards would make it difficult to rebuild a large development on the former industrial site.
“It’s been said many times that if you take this down, because of those changes, you couldn’t get anything comparable built back,” he said. “It’s not obvious to me that the answer to that is as simple as some people have suggested.”
Weinberger said he expects the city will have clarity on the path forward for Moran late this year or early next year. He said the administration has not spoken with other developers and does not have a plan for what should be built on the site if the structure is demolished.
City Councilor David Hartnett, I-North District, who attended Thursday’s news conference, said he’d like the old building to be demolished and has a clear idea of what he’d like to see in its place — and it’s not another large building.
Hartnett said the land should be turned into a public park with a city-run swimming pool.
“Right next to the brand-new skate park. I think it’d be a great fit,” Hartnett said.
