[B]URLINGTON — The work of a lobbying firm hired to help promote the Town Center redevelopment appeared evident at Monday’s City Council meeting, where for the first time voices in favor of the project far outnumbered those against.
The Burlington Business Association hired Montpelier lobbying firm KSE Partners to help advocate for the Town Center proposal and other development projects.
The Town Center plan involves replacing the existing downtown mall with two buildings offering a mix of housing, retail, commercial and office space. It would also reconnect the bisected portions of Pine and St. Paul streets through downtown, which the city would pay for with $22 million in bonds.
“We have worked hard to focus attention on the critical need for more housing, more office space and a revitalized downtown streetscape. To that end, we have formed Together 4 Progress,” said Kelly Devine, executive director of the business association, in an email.
On its website, Together for Progress describes itself as “a collective of engaged stakeholders” with the mission of promoting Burlington’s growth. The website and a Twitter account cropped up in recent days.
“BBA has also hired KSE Partners to help us with our social media messaging on a list of projects including the redevelopment of the Burlington Town Center,” Devine added.
A City Council vote on new downtown zoning that would accommodate the Town Center proposal is expected this fall. And a request to approve the city bonding to support the project is expected on the November ballot.
A call to action from Together for Progress encouraged people to attend Monday’s City Council meeting, and a petition on the website calls on the council to pass the zoning amendment it’s currently vetting.
The firm’s influence was on display Monday night at the first of three City Council work sessions to review the controversial zoning amendment that would allow the additional height and mass of the redevelopment’s proposed 14-story towers.
Voices in opposition to the redevelopment and the zoning amendment had greatly outnumbered expressions of support at recent public meetings, but that wasn’t the case Monday.
For its part, the City Council used Monday as an opportunity to review aspects of the proposed ordinance that it may wish to alter before an anticipated vote in late September.
Councilor Sharon Foley Bushor, I-Ward 1, chair of the ordinance committee — which spent the last few weeks reviewing the proposed change — summarized the difficulty facing the council: “The challenge for all of us is that we have a predevelopment agreement that sometimes gets confused with our responsibility to develop an ordinance for our downtown overlay,” Bushor said.
The agreement with developer Don Sinex that Bushor referenced received council approval in May, and it requires that a zoning change be approved on a timeline consistent with the Town Center owner’s anticipated construction schedule.
If the zoning change doesn’t meet stipulations in the agreement, or if it’s not in place in a timely fashion, Sinex can walk away from the project. A version of the new ordinance is included in the city’s agreement with Sinex in an appendix.
The obvious connection between the Town Center redevelopment and the zoning change has led to allegations from opponents that the amendment amounts to “spot zoning,” or zoning intended to specifically benefit a single property owner or project, which is illegal.
In a recent memo to city councilors, the city attorney says a spot zoning challenge wouldn’t hold up in court — essentially because the overlay includes other properties, involves uses that are in the public interest and conforms with municipal planning.
The areas the council identified for further discussion at two additional work sessions this month include whether the overlay should be expanded or shrunk, what the height and massing restrictions should be, and whether to allow above-ground parking — something Sinex plans for his project.
The next City Council work session on the zoning ordinance is scheduled for Thursday.
