FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 13, 2014
Contact: Mike Kanarick
802.735.7962
Mayor Miro Weinberger Announces Support of Champlain College’s Eagles Landing Project
Project Will Further Mayor’s Goals of Repairing City Finances and Addressing Housing Shortage
Burlington, VT – Mayor Miro Weinberger announced his support of Champlain College’s Eagles Landing project, based on the project’s furthering two key Administration goals: repairing the City’s finances and addressing Burlington’s housing shortage. A letter from the Mayor to the City’s Development Review Board follows.
March 12, 2014
RE: Eagles Landing / Application No. 14-0671, 14-0672, 14-0721 CA/MA; 194 St. Paul Street
Dear Development Review Board members,
I am writing to offer comments on Champlain College's Eagles Landing project in conjunction with your upcoming March 18 public hearing. Since taking office, two of my top priorities have been to repair the City's finances and to address what PlanBTV called Burlington’s “extreme shortage of housing”. While no project is perfect, Eagles Landing is a commendable project and represents significant progress towards both of these goals.
If the project is successfully built, the City will realize $1.1 million dollars from the sale of Browns Court and receive approximately $400,000 a year in new property tax revenue. These are very significant figures in a City that is still climbing out of a multi-million dollar financial hole and where a 1-cent increase in the property tax rate yields approximately $350,000 in annual revenue.
In addition, Eagles Landing represents an attempt by the City to directly address Burlington’s housing shortage through the creation of a significant number of new homes in a downtown site. My Administration has expended considerable effort pursuing and supporting this development, and the City Council approved the sale of the Browns Court property to Champlain College with a unanimous vote. My Administration hopes to see additional projects over the next few years that will add badly needed downtown housing and lessen student-related impacts in many existing neighborhoods by housing students in professionally managed downtown environments. A denial of a permit to the Eagles Landing project would be a significant setback to this new, broadly-supported, strategic effort to address one of Burlington’s chronic problems.
I very much appreciate the work of the DRB, the DAB, and City planning staff to work constructively with the applicant in the review process on issues such as scale, massing, noise, and other design issues – many concerns shared by me as well. The Champlain College team, to their credit, listened to public input and made significant modifications in response to these concerns. The result is a greatly improved project that does much to activate a currently dead streetscape, creates an inviting public edge along St. Paul Street, and adds a net increase of public parking to the area.
Finally, I'd like to share my appreciation of Champlain College as a community partner. The College has demonstrated over the past 20 years an unwavering commitment to help enrich the built environment, work with the community to be a good neighbor, and educate future community leaders and entrepreneurs. I have every confidence that they will continue to be good neighbors with this project.
Thank you for your consideration and for your valuable service to the City.
Sincerely,
Miro Weinberger
Mayor
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