Paula Routly: Is Burlington Making a Comeback?

This week marks the end of “Downtown BHS.” That’s shorthand for the education experiment that has played out in Burlington’s former Macy’s department store. In 2020, environmental testing found dangerous pollutants in Burlington High School’s 57-year-old campus on Institute Road. Displaced students, teachers and staff relocated to Macy’s, the erstwhile anchor of the Burlington Town Center. A rehab project of epic proportions, it made international news.

Downtown Burlington High School Credit: Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

Did I mention this happened one year into the pandemic? Or that the rest of the mall was long gone, reduced to an unsightly, depressing pit? Demolition started four years prior to make room for an ambitious redevelopment project that almost immediately ground to a halt.

In this week’s cover story, Mary Ann Lickteig visits the pop-up high school in its final days and recalls the details of its transformation. She talks with students, teachers and parents about the challenges and unexpected benefits of learning in a setting designed for shopping, not chemistry. It turns out: While conducting an experiment, sometimes you make discoveries you didn’t know you were seeking.

“They leave now with a great story,” Mary Ann writes of the BHS students, “and a slew of inadvertent life lessons in resiliency, camaraderie, adaptability and coping. Downtown BHS provided a five-plus-year-long teachable moment.” As principal Sabrina Westdijk summed up the experience: “It’s cultivated this sense of We can do really hard things together.”

That would be an apt mantra for Burlington, too, which appears to be making a comeback from a string of challenges that started in 2017 with the stalled mall makeover. The AC Hotel is now open in that spot, and people and businesses are moving into the adjacent apartments. The Champlain Parkway is nearly done, and over on Main Street, the yearslong disruptive road construction is also wrapping up. Now we’re seeing the public art portion of the “Great Streets” project, the good work of ever-busy, budget-strapped Burlington City Arts. I love the new “Lakebone” sculpture suspended west of City Hall Park. Two more public artworks are being installed downtown on June 24. You can read all about it in this week’s art section.

Burlington appears to be making a comeback from a string of challenges

Every summer weekend is a reminder of what’s possible when more people come to town. Festivals and special events help: the Vermont City Marathon, University of Vermont graduation, the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival. Last Friday I walked down to the waterfront — along with thousands of other grateful people — to hear Grammy Award-winning band Tank and the Bangas of New Orleans play for free. On that beautiful warm night, the Queen City was shining bright.

The past few years have taken a toll on Burlington restaurants and retail shops, and we’ve lost some good ones. But there is positive news, too: the reincarnation of Penny Cluse Café at Deep City, Farmers & Foragers taking over the Café HOT. spot, the new Italian deli Alimentari, the success of Fancy’s and Frankie’s, the expansion of EB Strong’s Prime Steakhouse. Our food writers, Melissa Pasanen and Jordan Barry, run themselves ragged every week trying to cover it all.

Burlington High School did its part, too, bringing 900 students downtown every day when the city needed them most: during the pandemic, in the winter, at lunchtime. Mary Ann notes that in her story, too. It’s possible Vermont’s biggest and most beleaguered burg learned a thing or two from the next generation about patience, perseverance and making the best of a bad situation.

This article appears in June 10 • 2026.