click to enlarge - Courtney Lamdin ©️ Seven Days
- 200 Church Street
The City of Burlington will sell an aging Church Street office building to its anchor tenant, Burlington Telecom, for $1.57 million.
The Burlington City Council approved the deal unanimously on Monday night, albeit somewhat begrudgingly. Councilors lamented the sale of the building but recognized that its long list of repairs is cost-prohibitive with the city facing a $13.1 million budget shortfall heading into next fiscal year.
Councilor Marek Broderick (P-Ward 8) said he hopes the sale is “the kick in the pants” Burlington needs to keep its buildings from languishing.
“That’s why I’m voting yes, because there is nothing we can do at this point,” he said.
The city bought the building, at 200 Church Street, in 2005 to launch Burlington Telecom, which was then a city-owned utility. The property is now showing its age. Both the roof and HVAC system are failing and would cost more than $1.5 million to replace.
The building is also ill-suited for its other tenants, the city's human resources department and the Burlington Community Justice Center. It lacks parking and privacy and isn’t compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act. Beetles and wasps have infested part of the building, and last week, a urinal “literally exploded” and flooded the bathroom,
a city memo says.
City officials say fixing up the building would take attention away from other properties that need upgrades, including the police station and city hall, both of which also have aging HVAC systems. Burlington Telecom, meantime, has told the city it will purchase the building as-is and make the repairs itself.
BT is now owned by Indiana-based firm Schurz Communications. As part of the sale, the city gave BT the right of first refusal to purchase the property if it was ever put on the market. If the property wasn't sold before 2034, the utility would have had the sole right to purchase it. In some ways, the deal felt like a foregone conclusion, Councilor Carter Neubieser (P-Ward 1) said.
"Unfortunately, we don't have a choice at this stage because we're sort of already locked into losing [the building]; the question is when," he said.
The city will lease space from BT until it can relocate its tenants. The HR department will move to another city-owned property, though officials haven't yet determined which one.
The Community Justice Center will move to the Post Apartments, a forthcoming Champlain Housing Trust project at the former Veterans of Foreign Wars building on South Winooski Avenue. The move won't happen for more than a year, but councilors approved the lease agreement on Monday night.
The sale is expected to close early next year.