[A]fter more than a year of discussions, Burlington’s city administration and the owner of the Burlington Town Center, Don Sinex, released a plan Wednesday to turn the vision of a fundamentally changed downtown into a reality.
The Burlington Town Center, which opened in 1976, has been the subject of a redevelopment discussion for years, with the process to set it in motion beginning in late 2014 after a City Council resolution. Now, the city administration and Sinex’s firm, BTC Mall Associates, will ask the council to approve their plan May 2.
The redevelopment would be done in two phases and completed in 2019. Among the proposed changes are:
- A 925-space parking garage with room for bike parking.
- The reconnection and improvement of Pine and St. Paul streets, which are both intersected by the existing mall.
- Open rooftop space for people living in the proposed 274 housing units. Fifty-four of those units would be affordable housing, per a city ordinance.
- A public rooftop observation deck and a public community space.
- A day care center.
- Almost 250,000 square feet of retail space.
- Some 340,000 square feet of commercial office space, with almost a third of that to be occupied by administrative workers for UVM Medical Center.
Sinex also announced that Champlain College has asked to lease 110 beds for its upperclass students. Pressed by reporters to reveal more, Sinex said he would be making announcements about more partnerships soon. Mayor Miro Weinberger said there would be more presentations about the project at the next City Council meeting, which is Monday.
The project would yield the tallest building in Vermont, at 160 feet, taking the crown from Burlington’s Decker Tower. However, Vermont could still lay claim to having the shortest tallest building of any state, behind South Dakota, according to the mayor.
Burlington expects to spend up to $21.9 million on infrastructure improvements but not the private development that Sinex’s firm plans. The city would take on some debt, however, and is going to the Statehouse this session to ask that its repayment deadline be extended to the end of the calendar year in 2035.
Weinberger touted the financial stability of the project and noted that numerous safeguards were in the plan to protect the city’s investment.
“We will not reimburse him and take possession of these public improvements until the tax base is in place,” the mayor said. “Our focus has been on risk mitigation.”
The Burlington mayor, prompted by a reporter’s question, also looked to quell uneasiness about major development projects after accusations arose last week of an alleged Ponzi-like scheme perpetrated by developers Bill Stenger and Ariel Quiros in northern Vermont.
“It’s a terrible situation up in the Northeast Kingdom,” Weinberger said. “The project that’s being contemplated here is a familiar public-private partnership.”
Before Sinex even “sticks a shovel in the ground,” he needs to find a contractor who can make a binding guarantee to complete the project and has a triple A score from a rating agency, Weinberger said.
