BURLINGTON — City councilors showed no appetite Monday to tear down Memorial Auditorium, a crumbling, nearly century-old downtown civic center that pays tribute to the city’s veterans.
Nor did they find consensus on how to revamp the historic structure — and perhaps more consequentially, how to pay for it.
As Burlington prepares to construct a new high school projected to cost $181 million, several councilors at a Monday night meeting expressed reluctance to take on another large, capital project that would claim more of the city’s capacity to borrow money.
With that in mind, city staff presented three models of how Burlington could use a “public-private partnership” to salvage the downtown property at minimal expense to taxpayers.
In two of the public-private partnership models, a private investor would take over the site and develop it. The arrangement would be similar to the beleaguered CityPlace project, which has left a notorious “pit” downtown.
Another model of the public-private partnership would rely on a coalition of community members to raise funds for the project through philanthropy, with additional money coming from state and federal grants. The “Get It Done Memorial Auditorium Committee” includes Melinda Moulton, who as the developer of Main Street Landing spearheaded efforts to revive Burlington’s waterfront from industrial wasteland.
Committee leaders urged councilors to heed results from a 2018 survey, where more than 2,000 city residents backed maintaining the building as a publicly 98˙owned, common space.
In response to that wave of support, the city began to explore how it could restore the building. But the push was interrupted by the arrival of Covid-19 in March 2020, Democratic Mayor Miro Weinberger told councilors Monday night.
Councilor Gene Bergman, P-Ward 2, said the council should listen to the survey’s findings.
“I don’t want to substitute at this point in time my opinions for what the people said,” Bergman said. “I would like us to, in a way, double down on what they said and see how we can make that happen.”
But Councilor Ali Dieng, I-Ward 7, argued that the survey shouldn’t be viewed as reflective of public opinion, since voters have more recently rejected a bond that would have allotted $10 million toward the building.
With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and a giant increase in the value of many homes around the city, Dieng said, residents want the city to tighten its belt more than they did in 2018.
“We have to go back to the drawing board because the priorities then and the priorities now for the people have substantially changed,” Dieng said.
Voters approved spending $1 million to prop up the decaying building on Town Meeting Day as part of a broader $23.8 million capital bond for infrastructure projects. Preserving the 1927 structure for future development would cost $700,000 in one-time expenses, with a yearly operating cost of $100,000, officials said on Monday.
City leaders expect to bring another bond before voters this fall, this one to finance the new high school. While school leaders hope to lessen the tax impact through private fundraising and grants, councilors appeared reluctant to agree to more debt before the bond amount is calculated.
“I do think we have to figure out the school question first and what that’s going to mean,” said Councilor Zoraya Hightower, P-Ward 1.
But if the city wants to retain rights to Memorial Auditorium, it might need to pitch in some taxpayer dollars to support that claim, Hightower said.
“To truly be a public-private partnership, where we have enough stake to be able to negotiate on what we want, I think we are going to have to put up some money,” she said.
Councilors could vote on allocating money to stabilize the auditorium as soon as their next scheduled meeting on June 6.
