Burlington Opens First Leg of Long-Delayed Champlain Parkway 

Burlington’s long-delayed Champlain Parkway is finally open — well, a portion of it, anyway.

With a snip of giant ceremonial scissors, Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak on Tuesday cut a paper banner welcoming the public to the newly paved road between Home and Lakeside avenues.

The segment, which includes a walk-and-bike path, is the first piece of the parkway to open after nearly six decades of planning. Estimated to be fully completed in 2026, the parkway will connect the unfinished Interstate 189 interchange to downtown Burlington. More than two-dozen city, state and federal officials were on hand Tuesday to celebrate the milestone.

“Today is a huge leap forward in finally living up to the parkway promise to former, current and future Burlingtonians,” City Council President Ben Traverse (D-Ward 5) said. “I'm looking forward to using this road for many, many years to come.”
Designed in the 1960s as a four-lane highway, the road was meant to run parallel to Pine Street and pass by the Barge Canal, a narrow waterway once used by lumber ships. But that plan was nixed in the 1980s after officials discovered the land was polluted with toxic chemicals. The road was rerouted but faced years of permitting battles and lawsuits before finally breaking ground in 2022.

Today’s parkway — a two-lane, low-speed city street — will connect I-189 to the new road between Home and Lakeside avenues. Traffic will then be directed onto Pine Street, which will become the parkway route all the way to Main Street.
The design includes a stormwater retention pond, new crosswalks, curbs and buried utility lines. Crews have already built a walk-and-bike path along much of Pine Street. Construction is continuing on several raised intersections along that corridor, where traffic has frequently been reduced to one lane.

City officials say the parkway will lessen truck traffic near Champlain Elementary School and make it possible to build more housing. That includes the impending redevelopment of the South End Innovation District, a collection of mostly-empty parking lots near Lakeside Avenue where developers envision hundreds of new units.

But the parkway is also slated to increase traffic in the King/Maple neighborhood, the most racially diverse along the route. Congestion would be alleviated with a new roadway known as the Railyard Enterprise Project, which would connect Pine to Battery Street. Construction on that road is at least three years away.
“The city is committed to getting this project done,” Burlington Public Works director Chapin Spencer said of the railyard project. “It has so many benefits for the community, and we look forward to engaging the community every step of the way as we move forward.”

Meantime, Spencer was content to celebrate the parkway’s milestone. He gestured to the nearby “World’s Tallest Filing Cabinet," a 40-foot tower built to symbolize the parkway’s delays. In an ironic twist, the piece had to be moved to make way for the new road.

The sculpture “represents all the things that this project team had to deal with,” Spencer said. “This is just a spectacular day.”