Four people were arrested Saturday night at the downtown CityPlace housing development site, a project that has been stalled for years, leaving a big dirt pit in downtown Burlington.
The group, whose members said they were protesting gentrification and the lack of affordable housing in the city, were arrested and cited for trespassing and for making a fire pit, according to Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad.
He said they arrested them at about 8 p.m. Saturday after a CityPlace security officer called police and said a group of people had entered the construction site, started a fire and refused to leave.
Officers arrived and told the group they were trespassing. They were asked to leave but refused, Murad said.
“When the four individuals refused to leave after being properly noticed, they were peacefully removed and taken to One North Ave, where they were processed and released that night with tickets for an open fire and citations to appear in court at a later date to answer the trespass charge,” Murad wrote in an email to VTDigger.
Arrested were Colleen Adams, 21; Lee Escher, 22; Deirdre Graham, 27; and William Keeton, 21.
While Murad said the people occupying the site were “peacefully removed,” a photo was shared on Twitter of those being arrested, with at least one person on the ground, their legs tangled with another.
Murad said the four people had chained themselves together with a bike chain, which the officer is trying to undo in the photo. He said the four people were not resisting arrest and no force was used.
In an email to VTDigger, members of the group said they were occupying the pit to protest gentrification and the lack of affordable housing available in the city, which they say is causing a housing crisis. On May 2, WCAX first reported that the group was setting up camp at the CityPlace site.
“Instead of remaining an idle construction project, the pit could be better used for truly affordable housing and become an investment in Burlington and the future lives of Burlingtonians,” members of the group wrote.
While CityPlace is required by law to have a certain number of affordable units, most of the building’s proposed 400 apartments would be more high-end. According to current plans, about 80 units would be priced at affordable housing standards.
The group members said they wouldn’t categorize the arrest as peaceful. They said they chose not to comply with police “in a nonviolent way.”
“There is no peace in arrest. There is no peace in policing,” they said. “We were having a nonviolent peaceful protest, and their use of force was in support of gentrification and the lack of affordable low-income housing options.”
Don Sinex, the developer who has been behind the CityPlace project since its launch in 2014, said it is dangerous for people to trespass on the site.
“This is private property that is posted and illegal trespassers will be prosecuted every time they break into our property,” Sinex said in an email to VTDigger.
“If they damage our property, we will hold them accountable,” he wrote. “They should take their actions elsewhere as we will not tolerate a blatant disrespect for the law and the denigration of private property rights.”
