Vermont’s first co-living and coworking business accelerator will find a home at Burlington’s Cambrian Rise.
Local investors will help pay for and design one of 12 buildings that will make up the development. The “innovation hub” will allow entrepreneurs to work and learn together, get access to startup funds for business, and live in a place that facilitates “the intense collision of ideas and mentoring,” according to a description of the project provided by its creators.
The project, called the Vermont Innovation Commons, will “bring talent and capital and business growth and, ultimately, jobs to a place that really needs it,” said Mark Naud, who’s heading up the effort. “There’s … nothing like that in the state of Vermont or in Burlington, certainly.”
Vermont Works, an investment firm started last year by Charlotte residents Robert Zulkoski and Frank Koster, launched the project. The duo hired Naud, a lawyer and former head of Burlington’s Community Sailing Center, to get the initiative off the ground.
The goal? To help startup companies grow, create living-wage jobs, and attract and retain young workers.
Naud said he settled on Cambrian Rise for its proximity to downtown, the gigabit internet available from Burlington Telecom, and the variety of housing, retail and offices that will make up the planned community on North Avenue. He reached out to project developer Eric Farrell about two months ago. The sides shook hands on a deal in late May, according to Farrell.
The innovation commons will provide an “anchor” for the development, Naud said. The 60,000-square-foot building will include offices, coworking space, meeting and event venues, common areas and temporary living quarters — “dorm rooms for grownups,” according to Naud. Young entrepreneurs could live there while they participated in a six-week course; remote workers would be able rent office space; business owners looking to relocate to Vermont may use the dorms as temporary living quarters while they scout out the area, he explained.
The project “is going to add a whole other dimension” to Cambrian Rise, Farrell said, though the existing building design will likely first require some “tweaks.” The two groups will discuss potential changes and get permit amendments in the coming weeks, he added. Construction is scheduled to begin in early 2019.
As part of the deal, Vermont Works also agreed to invest in the rest of the Cambrian Rise development. Naud did not reveal how much the group would shell out.
All told, Farrell’s project will include 739 units, as well as retail and mixed use space on the property once home to Burlington College. The first building, Liberty House, opened last year, and construction on other housing has already begun.
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8th biggest lake in the country – pollution problems and now the greedy developers with an assist from the Bernie Sanders family is adding more impervious service next to the Lake – Jane Sanders and Bernie Sanders – Bernie could have led a movement to conserve this land – he let it happen on his watch – now the destruction of Burlington ecosystem continues led by a republican mayor who masquerades as a Democrat – we know Miro is all about profit before preservation and his hiring of Neale Lunderville to plunder the citys resources should be a wake up call to the progressives in this city that still are asleep.
This feels like another nail in the coffin for working people in this city. Maybe the playbook is the enclosed city of the rich with their full rights intact and the rest of us as indentured servants welcome as we keep quiet and out of the way from their sensibilities.
Good for Eric Farrell. This in an enormously ambitious project with an equally enourmous amount of risk. In an era of extremely low real estate inventory this will help alleviate the intense pressure experienced in the current housing market and bring new vitality to the city. High density? Of course. It would be virtually impossible to create an economically viable project in this location without high density. A perfect project? Of course not. There is no such thing. But working within the constraints of the system is no easy easy task, and I wish this project all the best.
Studies have shown that engaging in socialist sloganeering like greedy developers and city of the rich and indentured servants, and attacking well-meaning people because theyre just not as radical and pure as you, really works to change minds and achieve public policy goals.
I wish the city focused on supporting development or repurposing of moderate-to-low-income condos in actual neighborhoods, not suburban-style condo developments in Burlington that already make up most of the Chittenden County condo market. Just one opinion, but I moved to Burlington in hope of living in an affordable, small condo in a walkable, livable neighborhood. Instead we have affordable condos cut off from everything, so you need to drive everywhere, like the condos on Riverside Ave or Austin Drive or Cambrian Rise, or we have condos in walkable, livable neighborhoods that cost as much as a house in the New North End or South Burlington.
A shame that the city is moving in a direction where only those with the economic means can buy property in walkable, livable neighborhoods, while the rest of us are eventually priced out of the city and/or the state.
More development means more people . . means more pollution and stress on the lake. These sewage spills/dumps will only get more frequent and larger. But , hey . . we have the Arts!
Who needs clean, safe drinking water when the Neo-liberal/Capitalist Kool-Aid tap is running wide open at City Hall?
Bottoms up, folks!
Despite its rich history and natural beauty, BTV is closer to being the next Plattsburgh, NY or Rutland, VT: a nice place to visit but largely irrelevant as a player in the 21st century economy. As this article points out, the Vermont Commons initiative is a positive step to address our need for job creating opportunities consistent with an emerging creative economy, and in doing so, improve the chances of retaining/attracting the 18-40 year old demographic who continue to flee the state in alarming numbers. From an urban planning perspective, imbedding this initiative in Cambrian Rise, a walkable and diverse mixed-use neighborhood adjacent to downtown, bike path makes sense, and I wish it success.
@Mark Montalban
WHAT?
John C. you are quite right, the only way to make a city viable is to have younger workers in better than minimum wage jobs to pay taxes and support initiatives for affordable housing. Unfortunately the basic economic tenet of having a tax base to support initiatives is lost on a lot of the posters. The average age of working Vermonters is getting higher and closer to retirement age so there are fewer and fewer younger people paying into the system. The complaints about things being for the rich may be right but not for the reasons that Mark M says. It is because of the spend, spend, spend mentality instead of seeing how to attract more higher paying jobs to support the economy in VT. You cannot have it both ways- it is pure economics 101.
@NorthOldEnder, we can all thank Jane Sanders for giving us this project.
Riiiight.
Because Jane Sanders was in a position of leadership to aid and abet the abuse meted out by those in the employ of the Roman Catholic church in Vermont.