Sweetwaters owner David Melincoff has been watching with trepidation as a disruptive Church Street Marketplace construction project creeps toward his restaurant’s front door. And now he’s fighting to delay the dig that’s scheduled to rip up the pedestrian mall’s City Hall block for much of August.
Melincoff collected more than 700 signatures in less than a week on a petition he’s circulating — on the social action website Change.org, no less — that calls for the lower-block portion of the project to be postponed for a month.
He fears that the noise, dust and unsightliness associated with the electrical rewiring work will hit Sweetwaters hard.
“August is our busiest month of the year,” Melincoff explains. It accounts for 17 percent of the restaurant’s annual sales and 32 percent of its net income, he calculates. And a majority of summertime diners choose a table on the Church Street portion of Sweetwaters’ sidewalk cafe, he says.
“What’s happening, in effect, is that they’re jackhammering our dining room,” Melincoff declares.
Sweetwaters’ business will be off by as much as 50 percent as a result, he warns. And that will whack the wait staff right in the wallet, with employees’ combined income likely to drop by $60,000 or more, Melincoff says.
Marketplace director Ron Redmond says city officials are striving to mitigate the project’s effects up and down Burlington’s four-block-long retail epicenter, but suggested it was unlikely the project would be delayed. He notes that work on the Church Street trench stops each weekday at 4 p.m., and construction fencing is scaled back at that time, which means “the outdoor restaurants should be fine for the dinner hours.” Construction directly in front of individual outlets on the Marketplace does not last for more than seven business days, Redmond adds.
Shops, restaurants and vendors currently or previously experiencing the dig offer varying assessments of its effects.
Some pedestrians were covering their ears as they hurried past Three Tomatoes Trattoria late this morning. A cutting tool was producing an unpleasant smell as well as a piercing whine that ensured most of the restaurant’s outdoor tables would remain vacant. Three Tomatoes manager Julia Mattison says she’s bracing for a sharp downturn in revenues due to the project that started on her block earlier this week.
Restaurants are being slammed harder than stores, says Marissa Stokes, manager of Ecco, a women’s clothing store on the corner of Church and Bank. “But,” she cautions, “when people come down here to eat they also shop.” Street vendors have suffered too, Stokes adds.
A woman setting up the Hawaiian Shaved Ice stand who declined to give her name says she didn’t work at all last week because the dig had eliminated her usual spot on the Marketplace.
But to Sam Longe, manager of furniture store Pompanoosuc Mills, the dig has been no big deal. “There was a little downturn in traffic,” he says, “but for a construction project of that magnitude they were pretty quiet and kept it nice and neat.”
Redmond concedes that the projected six-month-long project is producing headaches for some merchants. “There’s never a good time to do this,” he says, noting that asphalt plants start shutting down in November, making a fall start-up unfeasible.
Work was initially scheduled to get underway in 2008, but that’s when the Great Recession started to bite, Redmond says. By the following year, the vacancy rate had climbed to 11 percent on the Marketplace. “It would have been totally insane to do this project then,” he observes. A survey of merchants last year showed sales were “starting to move in a positive direction,” so officials decided to start replacing the antiquated electrical wiring system as soon as this past winter ended.
Four-fifths of the $2 million cost is being paid by the feds, with the city’s capital budget covering the rest. The installation of a far more efficient lighting system should be completed by November, Redmond says.
Sweetwaters owner Melincoff says he appreciates the efforts being made by the Marketplace and especially by Mayor Miro Weinberger’s office, which, he says, has been “extraordinarily responsive.” Melincoff insists, “I’m not trying to be obstructionist. I recognize the importance of the project, and I’m willing to have it happen here in September, October, November — just not in August.”
He offers this analogy: “Would University Mall jackhammer up their floors in the middle of the Christmas season?”
Photos by Kevin J. Kelley
This article appears in The Animal Issue 2012.
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Lets see this project was begun in the Kiss led era. Enough said as we know the damage Kiss inflicted upon the city now running for state senate he wants to spread his talent or lack of it county and state wide. Hope Kiss is not elected in November.
ABK, Anybody But Kiss. President of said led charge Dale Tillotson.
This project needs to be done. Pedestrians risked being electrocuted walking down the street last year from exposed wires and rusted-through lamppost bases. It would seen maintenance once every 25 years isn’t too much to bear.
Personally I love the grittiness of it. I love that the street is torn up and that there’s stuff being built and worked on. Burlington is a city, not a theme park. Construction in our urban core means we continue to evolve. It might not look good on a post card, but a post card is an abstraction. Church Street is real. Case in point: http://overheardonchurch.tumbl… .
It’s more than offensive that they have created a petition using a social action website to forestall a project that will improve their patio section, based simply on financial reasons. This isn’t an “injustice,” it’s city maintenance. They postponed the project for almost 4 years already, do you really think there will ever be a “good” time?
If he’s not obstructionist, then what does he perceive himself as?
As soon as sales and business picks up, that’s when the Marketplace people think they should start a project that will send tourists away? I’m not convinced by the assertion that there would be no asphalt for a fall project. Roadway projects seem perfectly able to continue into the fall.
Thanks Kevin for the story. For those interested in viewing regular updates of our FAQ (frequently asked questions) please go to this link on the Marketplace’s website.
http://www.churchstmarketplace… Our contractor, Wright & Morrissey, met yesterday with David and other City Hall block restaurateurs (Red Square, Scuffer, Church & Main); we’ll be meeting weekly to answer questions and look for strategies to mitigate disruption. Construction ends at 4 PM weekdays, no weekend construction, and our goal is to open up as much space for cafes as possible during these times by moving the construction fence. We’ll get there!
Howdy all. Nice dialogue here. I am a vendor on Church St & it has definitely had a negative impact on us. I must admit wondering why the project could not have been done during the shoulder seasons (April & May, September – November)…answering my own question, I figured it would be more expensive in less predictable weather. But when you take into account lost tax revenues for the City & State, the additional expenses could be dwarfed by those losses. I don’t know and personally don’t have the time to take up arms. In general, the Church St Marketplace does a remarkable job and I can only assume they chose these dates out of obligation, not preference.
Grittiness and constant improvement are great but there is a time and place for everything. Disruptive, dirty and inconvenient is not what we want during peak tourist season. The interruption of livelihoods is also very real for many.
No one is arguing that the project shouldn’t be done. What is at issue is timing. Sweetwaters and the merchants of the lower block of Church St are asking that the construction schedule be reviewed so that light poles and trees are installed during the month of August instead of ripping up our outdoor dining space in the busiest month of the year. We are asking for reasonableness.
Yes, the busiest month of the year is not a good time when the construction company could easily be installing trees and light poles on the other blocks. We are not asking that the job not be done, we are asking that resources be deployed to do parts of the project that do not impact the livelihoods of so many. Again, I hate to sound like a broken record but this is the busiest month of the year and if you were to look down the lower block of Church St right now, you would see hundreds of people dining outside. The most amount of cafes are on the lower block and the construction will eliminate and or render the seating completely non-desirable. We are asking for reasonableness. We are willing to give up our seating in the month of September (still a very busy month), it’s not like we are asking to hold the project indefinitely. When the marketplace usurps their power in a way that so dramatically impacts the livelihood of the merchants and employees of Church St., how is this not social injustice?
An obstructionist is someone who does not want the project to go forward. A reasonable person is one that wants to mitigate the damage to their business, their employee’s livelihood and to the perception of our beautiful city by the many tourists who visit during the month of August. A reasonable person would think that installing trees, light poles and other finishing work on the upper blocks during the busiest month of the year would make more sense then tearing up the street of the block that has the most outdoor cafes. There is a huge difference between the two.
The sweetwaters people are sounding pretty bitter right now.
social injustice? You can’t be serious. Social injustice is used to describe race relations, a women’s right to choose, religious issues. I think you barely understand what social injustice even means.
Epicvermont is right on. Now doing work on Church Street is social injustice??? No, it’s NIMBYism. Stop the whining.
BTW, Ken’s has had this “social injustice” for the entire month of June. I didn’t hear you complaining about his social injustice.