[B]URLINGTON — Burlington city councilors voted Monday to approve the sale of a city parking lot to Richard Bove Jr., who has submitted plans to the city to raze the lot and his family’s adjacent Bove’s Italian restaurant on Pearl Street and use the space to build a hotel and apartments.
Bove’s plan is to make space for a roughly 76-room hotel and 20-unit apartment building by demolishing the restaurant and two nearby rental houses. Bove’s restaurant closed in 2015 but started a manufacturing facility in Milton that produces its pasta sauces and meatballs.
The city will sell Bove a 30-spot metered parking lot behind the restaurant in exchange for the value of the property, $500,000. Bove would keep 30 parking spots for public use in the daytime.
The planned new apartments will qualify as affordable. A number of units have to be rented below market rates under Burlington’s inclusionary zoning ordinance. The rest will be affordable for people relying on Housing Choice vouchers, also known as Section 8 vouchers, according to a memo from Noelle MacKay, director of Burlington’s Community and Economic Development Office.
The hotel will be of similar quality to a Microtel Inn & Suites by Wyndham Hotel Group, according to the memo, and will be owned and operated by Bove.
Many councilors supported the project, citing the promise of less expensive hotel rooms and affordable housing. The lot sale passed the council 9-3.
“Of all the property in the city of Burlington, I thought, I could live with this sale,” said Sharon Bushor, I-Ward 1.
Other councilors said the entire package was attractive.
“This development does everything that we have asked of developments in the city, and I don’t think that a parking lot is worth stalling over,” said Richard Deane, D-East District.
Progressive Councilors Max Tracy, P-Ward 2, and Ali Dieng, P/D-Ward 3, opposed the deal, as did Councilor Joan Shannon, D-South District.
“I do not take the sale of city assets lightly,” Tracy said. “We should only sell if we have to. This does not seem to be the case.”
Parking will become harder to find downtown as the Burlington Town Center Mall development starts this winter, Tracy said. He also said city assets should only be sold to people who are in good standing, and Bove’s has run afoul of city codes in the past.
Dave Hartnett, D/R-North District, who voted for the lot sale, reiterated that the Bove family has had trouble with the city in the past, but most of their dealings with the city have been positive.
“They have a lot of property in the city that are gold standard as well,” Harnett said.
MacKay, director of the city development office, said the parking lot is one of a handful of underused city-owned properties.
“Utilization of this surface lot continues to decline,” MacKay explained that on average, 18 percent of the spaces are used, according to a tally by Burlington’s Department of Power and Water conducted during June and July.
Although the lot is profitable — it made about $23,000 and cost the city just over $8,000 to maintain last year — MacKay wrote that the lot would take well over 30 years to recoup the proposed sale price.
As part of the deal, Bove would renovate the historic General Stannard House on the corner of Pearl and George streets. It would continue to serve as housing.
Bove hopes to start building next spring, MacKay said.
