[B]URLINGTON — The City Council has set a timeline to review a polarizing zoning change that would allow the additional building height needed for a proposed major redevelopment of the Town Center Mall.
The zoning amendment would allow buildings up to 160 feet tall within an overlay district that covers approximately a 9-acre portion downtown, including the area that covers the Town Center Mall, several parking garages, L.L. Bean and Macy’s.
Currently, downtown zoning caps building height at 65 feet — or 105 feet if the developer is granted bonuses for public amenities included in a project.
At the Monday meeting, the council passed a motion referring the proposed zoning change to its Ordinance Committee, with the full council to take up the issue again Aug. 15, regardless of any action by the committee.
Max Tracy, P-Ward 2, called the motion a “real affront to collegiality on the council,” adding that, in his four years as a councilor, he had never seen a similar attempt to bypass the committee process.
Tracy, one of three councilors serving on the Ordinance Committee, is the most vocal critic of the zoning change and the redevelopment it would allow. He cast the lone vote in May against a predevelopment agreement between the city and the mall owner that set the zoning amendment as a precondition for the proposed $220 million redevelopment of that property.
Tracy questioned whether the council would be allowed to take up the new zoning without action from the committee. City Attorney Eileen Blackwood assured him that council rules allow the full council to take up a measure that’s been referred to committee, even if it’s voted down in committee.
“Just because it hasn’t happened doesn’t mean it’s not allowed,” Blackwood said, adding that she could not recall whether the council had used that power previously.
Joan Shannon, D-South District, defended the motion, which she brought forward, saying it will actually create a more thorough and engaged process by allowing the full council to vet the zoning proposal.
The motion also calls for two special work sessions in late August, with the intention of holding a public hearing and then a final vote on the zoning amendment in mid-September.
The planned redevelopment of the mall property would involve housing, office and commercial space in two buildings — one with towers reaching 160 feet in height.
City voters will be asked in November to approve $21 million in public spending, financed with a portion of the increased taxes resulting from the project, to reconnect Pine and St. Paul streets through the current mall property as part of the work.
Tracy and other Progressives on the council channeled the frustration of critics who say consideration of the zoning change is being rushed to meet the demands of Don Sinex, who owns the mall and whose company will handle the redevelopment.
The city’s agreement with Sinex says that if zoning allowing the desired building height isn’t in place by Sept. 9, which is 120 days after the agreement was signed, then Sinex can terminate the deal. The city already appears unlikely to meet the timeline precisely.
Shannon’s motion, which will position the council to vote on the new zoning within roughly a week of the agreement’s deadline, passed 7 to 3, with Tracy and fellow Progressives Selene Colburn, East District, and Sara Giannoni, Ward 3, voting no.
City Council President Jane Knodell, also a Progressive, is recovering from hip surgery and was not present to vote. Democrat Chip Mason recused himself because his law firm represents Sinex’s company in an unrelated matter.
Efforts by the three Progressives to delay consideration of the zoning ordinance until the Planning Commission sends recommendations to the council failed as well.
Monday’s meeting again drew extensive public comment, with opponents deriding what they say is a hasty public review of the new zoning to accommodate a project that is a harbinger of high-rise development in Burlington.
Supporters say the new zoning, and the project it would enable, offers desperately needed housing and will build the city’s tax base, reconnect the city’s grid and spur economic growth by bringing more workers downtown.
Phil Merrick, co-owner of August First Bakery, told councilors that his employees, many of whom make $15 or less per hour, can’t comfortably afford to live anywhere in the city — whether it’s in housing deemed affordable or not — and urged the council to move forward with a project that could hold down rents by increasing the housing stock.
“Building more housing of all kinds is what it’s going to take to help the housing crisis. The people who are now spending $1,500 for a one-bedroom apartment in the Old North End will vacate and go to a nicer place,” he said.
When more affluent tenants move on, rents will drop where they’ve created vacancies, Merrick said. A 14-story, or 160-foot, development doesn’t bother him, he added, if that’s what it takes to make it feasible for the developer.
“I don’t have a problem with developers making money. They’re putting a lot of risk on the line,” Merrick said.
However, Charles Simpson, a member of the Coalition for a Livable City, which is advocating against the redevelopment and the zoning, said that if the new overlay district is approved, it will lead to more proposals for developments that are “vastly out of scale” with downtown.
“The wolves are coming out of the forest. Everyone’s going to want greater height,” Simpson said. Another resident referred to the Town Center proposal as a “Trojan horse for other development projects.”
Mayor Miro Weinberger, in clarifying his remarks at a recent Planning Commission meeting, told VTDigger through a spokesperson that Burlington is not on a trajectory that would bring numerous 160-foot buildings to downtown and that additional height would be limited to the new district.
Simpson pointed to a letter sent to the Planning Commission by David Schilling, with Investors Corporation of Vermont, a company that owns a number of downtown properties.
Schilling, who declined to be interviewed for this report, wrote that he supports creating an overlay that allows more height, but he added that, as written, it appears to be “unfair spot zoning” because it primarily benefits a single property owner.
“We strongly believe that the Planning Commission should expand the proposed Downtown Mixed Use Core Overlay district to include additional properties in the downtown core,” Schilling wrote.
“Please consider this as an opportunity to spur additional investment in Burlington and not just favoring or protecting one developer as the current overlay plans seems to do,” Schilling added.
A lawyer for the Town Center redevelopment has dismissed spot zoning allegations, saying in a letter to the Planning Commission that a legal challenge on those grounds would not hold up in court.
