Six months after breaking ground on the long-delayed CityPlace project in downtown Burlington, partners in the development are looking to make minor tweaks in their plans.
On Thursday night, the owners of the full-block construction project spoke at the Wards 2 and 3 neighborhood planning assembly and presented their latest plans, which will be pitched to the city’s Development Review Board early next month.
Jesse Robbins, a project manager with Freeman French Freeman architects who is working on the CityPlace project, gave a presentation at the Old North End meeting and acknowledged the changes were minor.
“This could almost be ‘spot the changes’ because it’s not a super extensive change,” Robbins said. But it does require the team to go back through zoning approvals.
Prior plans called for a restaurant at the upper floors, but in this economic climate, the owners and architects rethought that.
“Really what the market told us is, it’s a tough time for restaurants just because they can’t get staff. It’s tough to lease restaurant space,” Robbins said. “So in order to get the project built, we needed to provide what was really needed, which is housing.”
Under the new proposal, the south building in the project would be 5 feet shorter compared to previous plans. The building would longer need as many mechanical units at the top, since the building would be all-electric. Some of that space would be converted to residential units.
Other than the addition of balconies, the rest of the plans are very similar to what was previously presented to the city, Robbins said. There still would be ground-floor retail on most sides of the building, along with upper floors with more than 400 units of new housing. Around 85 affordable units would be built by Champlain Housing Trust.
In addition to the building construction, the plan would reconnect St. Paul and Pine streets. That portion of the project got a signoff in March when the Vermont Economic Progress Council approved a plan to finance up to $18.8 million from the city’s district for tax increment financing, or TIF.
Crews on site now are working on the foundation for the south building along Bank Street. Dave Farrington of Farrington Construction, which is part of the new ownership group, said the group expects that building to be completed in the fall of 2024. Champlain Housing Trust’s affordable units are expected to be among the last to be completed because of a more complicated financing picture, according to Farrington. That puts overall completion of the project in the fall of 2025.
“That’s our deadline with the city and everybody’s agreed to it,” Farrington said. “We’re right on schedule.”
Farrington added that he has been working with neighboring businesses around the construction site. Outside of having to replace some fallen vases and pictures at Simon Pearce and Frog Hollow due to vibrations from construction, the feedback has been positive.
“In general, we haven’t had many complaints,” Farrington said.
