[B]URLINGTON — Anyone standing in City Hall Park at 6 Monday evening would have seen something unusual — Mayor Miro Weinberger and city councilors boarding two chartered University of Vermont buses that were about to embark on a tour of the city’s South End.
The City Council field trip was part of a necessity hearing process for the Champlain Parkway, an upgrade to the South End’s main thoroughfares to better connect I-189 with downtown Burlington. Conceived in 1965 as a four-lane highway called the Southern Connector, the now two-lane, 25-mph road is moving forward under the Weinberger administration, with construction slated to begin in 2019.
The necessity hearing was held so that councillors could decide whether the “public good, necessity, and convenience of the inhabitants of the municipality require the highway,” according to a city memo prepared by the law firm Dunkiel Saunders.
Fifty separate rights of way had to be obtained in order to construct the parkway. The Vermont Agency of Transportation has already obtained rights for all but 12 of those properties. Seven of those 12 are for temporary use during the parkway’s two-year construction.
The council is scheduled to vote at its next meeting June 4 on the project’s necessity. If it decides the project is “necessary,” the city could use eminent domain to obtain any outstanding rights of way.
Attorney Judith Dillon, representing the Innovation Center on Lakeside Avenue that abuts the proposed parkway, raised an objection to the necessity hearing just before councilors were preparing to board the buses. She said that any decisions stemming from the hearing would be rendered “void” because her client had not received advanced notice.
“Because the city has failed to comply with the notice requirements … by failing to give 30-days notice to persons owning or interested in lands through which the highway may pass or abut, the proceedings cannot go forward,” said Dillon.
City Council President Kurt Wright then convened an executive session to consult with the city’s outside attorneys, Brian Dunkiel and Jon Rose. The councilors decided to move forward with the hearing and get on the buses.
The white and green UVM buses motored down St. Paul Street to Route 7, then turned down Home Avenue to trace the path of the parkway. City Council members pored over colored maps detailing the chunks of land to be obtained in each of the 12 parcels.
Kirsten Merriman-Shapiro, senior projects specialist with the city who led one of the tour buses, had the driver stop in front of properties such as the Howard Center, where the city still needs to secure 789 square feet of permanent access and a 1,095-square-foot temporary easement.
Councilors waved at a group of residents having a barbecue on a front lawn that could soon have a city-built fence across it.
The buses stopped at the park-and-ride lot off Lakeside Avenue and councilors walked to a vacant lot next to Burlington’s Parks and Recreation Department. Despite the television cameras, only one affected property owner asked a question.
Bob Cranston, representing Cumberland Farms, whose 661 Pine St. location would have to cede property to the parkway, asked whether construction would have an impact on the arrival of delivery trucks to his business. He was told that the city would work with the construction crews to ensure his business would not be affected.
Back at City Hall, a few opponents of the parkway laid out their concerns during the continued necessity hearing.
“I’ll speak about necessity for those who feel that it’s not a necessity for their property to be intruded upon,” said Burlington resident Barbara Wynroth. “I feel the whole thing is unnecessary.”
Tony Redington of the Pine Street Coalition laid out the advocacy group’s objections to what he called an outdated design that fails to provide “separate, adequate safe bike lanes.”
Redington said in an interview after the hearing that multi-use paths can work in areas with low use, but expressed safety concerns about mixing South End bike commuters and schoolchildren on the same path, citing a recent bike crash in Lebanon, New Hampshire, that killed a woman.
The Pine Street Coalition, which has threatened to file a federal lawsuit, proposes using roundabouts instead of six traffic lights to calm traffic. Redington added that he believes the design has received little more than “cosmetic” updates in recent years, not addressing the South End business district’s recent growth.
“There’s really been no change in the design of the parkway,” said Redington during the hearing. “The die was cast in December of 2006, the year before the iPhone was invented.”
Weinberger has said that he feels he put forth a “compromise plan” in 2012 that will balance the needs of cars, walkers, bikers and South End businesses.
“After many years of work and taxpayer expense, permits are in place and it’s time to get the road built,” Weinberger said in a recent interview.
Despite questions raised about the validity of the hearing, Councilor Chip Mason motioned to close the hearing and for city staff to review findings in preparation for the council’s June 4 vote.
