BURLINGTON — City officials reevaluated the city’s development agreement with CityPlace Burlington developers Brookfield Asset Management and Don Sinex in June before ultimately reaffirming their commitment to the project, public records acquired by VTDigger show.
Attorney Jeremy Farkas, who has been working for the city on the project, prepared a “CPB Default Analysis” a “Non-compliance list” in June as delays on the project persisted. A month later, Brookfield announced it was redesigning the project and Mayor Miro Weinberger said he believed the city should continue its collaboration with Brookfield.
VTDigger reported in March that the city had considered a worst-case scenario plan to pull out of the proposed $220 million development project, before gaining reassurance from Brookfield’s increased involvement in the day-to-day management of the project last winter.
But the renewed review of the city’s options under the agreement reflects heightened concern from the city this summer about the lack of progress.
VTDigger received 1,611 pages of public records after requesting communications between Brookfield and city staff, city councilors and consultant Jeff Glassberg in the months leading up to Brookfield’s decision to pull the plug on the initial design.
The records, covering the period from May to August, were heavily redacted, with the city citing an exemption to the Vermont Public Records Act for internal communications preliminary to policy determination and records that would “cause the custodian to violate any statutory or common law privilege” if made public.
The most critical information — the “CPB default analysis” and “Non-compliance list” — were redacted. The city would “cause the custodian to violate any statutory or common law privilege.” Communications between Farkas, Glassberg and Weinberger’s chief of staff Jordan Redell about the analysis were also redacted, and the city cited the deliberative process exemption.
In May, Glassberg’s understanding of when construction could be starting shifted, the records show. In an email to city councilor Perri Freeman about a community meeting about CityPlace, Glassberg wrote that the meeting should be held after construction had started.
“June is still feasible (and as I know the construction team has planned), but maybe we should be looking at a meeting date into July,” Glassberg wrote.
But by the end of May, it was no longer clear that Brookfield would lay out a construction schedule in June, Glassberg wrote in a May 23 email to Freeman.
“June seems too soon for Brookfield to be able to speak with assurance about the construction schedule,” Glassberg wrote.
In a May 29 email to Glassberg, Brookfield’s Will Voegele said the company had “received substantially all sub [subcontractor] pricing” and made “significant progress toward evaluating, qualifying and quantifying bid prices.”
“We continue to work diligently on all milestones with a significant focus on vetting and evaluating bid pricing,” Voegele wrote.
During that time, Brookfield had been arranging meetings with every member of the City Council, and Voegele told Glassberg that Brookfield had been making “meaningful progress in our effort to engage directly with City Council members and the community.”
By June, the records suggest that the city was reevaluating its options, as Redell emailed Farkas, who sent a memo titled “CPB Default Analysis” and a “Noncompliance list” to Redell, interim CEDO director David White, city attorney Eileen Blackwood and assistant city attorney Richard Haesler on June 12.
Brookfield officials met with a group of city officials on July 9, the week before the announcement on the redesign, and on July 15 Weinberger spoke with Chase Martin, a senior vice president for Brookfield Properties.
When Brookfield announced the redesign in July, Weinberger said Brookfield should provide an update “as soon as possible” that includes illustrations of the project changes, a general timeline and plans to minimize the public impacts during construction.
