[T]he results of a Burlington-wide survey to gauge the community’s appetite for action on Memorial Auditorium show almost unanimous support for renovation.
Of the almost 2,600 Burlington residents who responded to the survey, 84 percent said they support renovation of the building, while 64 percent said that maintaining the original status of the building as a memorial to World War I should be “prominently highlighted” going forward.
Kirsten Merriman-Shapiro, a senior projects and policy specialist at Burlington’s Community and Economic Development Office, said now that the city has the data, it will hold two public workshops to discuss renovation plans.
The workshops will be held on Aug. 30 and sometime in September.
“What we found is there is a lot of interest in restoring and renovating it as a public assembly space and there may be some complementary pieces around that too,” Merriman-Shapiro said.
The top three choices for how to use the space were “a place for shows and entertainment” (79 percent), “a civic and community meeting space” (73.8 percent), and a “farmer’s market space” (73.6 percent).
But the city is not rushing to decide on how to use Memorial Auditorium.
The question of what to do with Memorial Auditorium, built in 1927 as a 2,600-person auditorium and civic center to honor World War I veterans, has been hanging over Mayor Miro Weinberger and the Burlington community since the building closed in 2016 due to disrepair.
Merriman-Shapiro said now that there is an understanding of what the public wants, the City Council hopes to move forward with a ballot question soon.
“We are hopeful to bring it to the voters in November, but are more realistically looking at March. So it’s not a long period of time and we hope the public is paying attention and is being part of the process,” Merriman-Shapiro said.
In the survey, 84 percent of responders said they would vote in support of renovation on a ballot question. The survey also asked questions about the community’s willingness to pay for it.
“The building renovation will require a municipal bond. For home and business owners, this would mean an increase in municipal property taxes until the bond is paid off. For renters this may mean an increase in rent,” the survey said.
At the highest cost for the taxpayers listed in the survey — $110 per year or about $9 per month — 73 percent of respondents still said they supported the project.
Weinberger said in a statement that he will work toward a Memorial Auditorium bond question being put forward in March.
“After consultation with City Councilors, I have decided to work towards a Memorial Auditorium bond being on the March 2019 Town Meeting Day ballot to 1) ensure that the public engagement process underway — that has elicited a very high level of participation — is completed successfully and not rushed; and 2) in response the challenges we have faced this summer, to allow the City to consider accelerating this fall our existing plans to upgrade our wastewater and stormwater systems with new bonding and capital investment,” Weinberger said.
