Editor’s note: This commentary is by John Mahoney, a retired middle school teacher who grew up in Burlington and has lived in the New North End for about three decades.
[I] grew up in Burlington in a house not far from Memorial Auditorium. I can remember being in the auditorium on a winter Saturday night and joining the crowd in urging “Rapid” Ralph Coleman of the St. Mike’s basketball team to do in warmups what college players were not allowed to do in a game: dunk. Ralph obliged. Down came the shattered glass backboard and hoop. No game was played that night, but they took care of that the following afternoon at Rice Memorial High School.
On another occasion, I was walking by the auditorium on a spring evening, heard music, and wandered in. The small business college on the hill was having a spring event. The band was called Chicago Transit Authority, later known as CTA, and then just Chicago. No charge. That was nice.
Another time a band was setting up one afternoon for a performance. A brother and I walked in and got a job selling programs for the evening event. The Fifth Dimension had a pretty good sound and I made a few bucks. I can remember boat shows at the auditorium that left me daydreaming about what my future Chris-Craft would look like.
One night while I was in college at UVM, the city sky lit up with flames. With other volunteers, I helped remove church records from the vault of the rectory as the Catholic cathedral next door was consumed. We stacked the records in the aisles of Izzo’s Market, an Italian grocery on Pearl Street. The loss of that church was devastating for many, including myself. I had been baptized and participated in the other sacraments in that church. Today a building still sits in that place, but the parish is gone. There isn’t much going on at the auditorium these days either.
Taxpayers in Burlington were recently asked to pay more to cover infrastructure improvements in city water systems and to fund major renovations at the high school. There are discussions now that could result in taxpayers paying tens of millions to make a really old, inefficient building somehow useful. The downtown area presently has a number of arts venues of various sizes. But the Flynn Space may be one that is begging for a new home. As a taxpayer, I find it infinitely more palatable to spend $4 million-$5 million on a newer, more functional building (the cathedral) than to sink tens of millions into a building whose usefulness has long since passed (my sentimentality notwithstanding).
The cathedral has space that could be reconfigured for music and as a performance arts practice space. Basement rooms could be used for meetings (there is an existing elevator – lacking in Memorial Auditorium), classes or social gatherings, serviced by an institutional-sized kitchen. Daycare or offices could be accommodated on the main floor or smaller second floor. Nice landscaping and some parking make it a much more attractive site for city residents to preserve than Memorial Auditorium. The auditorium site could be turned over for development that would add greatly to city coffers, which seems to be a significant goal of the present administration. Saving the cathedral for community use and saying goodbye to Memorial Auditorium is an idea that I would support.
