Two college kids may get their chance to breathe new life into a long-dormant coal plant on Burlington’s waterfront. Mayor Miro Weinberger announced Monday that he would like the city to invest $6.3 million in a proposal — concocted by two University of Vermont students — to convert the Moran Plant into the site of a performance space, restaurant, glassblowing studio and “educational brewery,” among other uses. 

Efforts to refurbish the eyesore beside Lake Champlain have repeatedly failed during the last three decades.

If 22-year-old Tad Cooke and 23-year-old Erick Crockenberg and their team prove effective at scrounging up a lot of cash — the total cost is pegged at $26 million, much of which would have to be raised through donations — Weinberger will ask the city to pitch in $4.2 million worth of tax-increment financing, plus $2.1 million that had been previously allocated to the plant.

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Alicia Freese was a Seven Days staff writer from 2014 through 2018.

4 replies on “Mayor Endorses College Duo’s Ambitious Plan for Moran Plant”

  1. A $26 million project is not “economically viable” if it relies on grants and rich donors. Businesses should stand on their own and survive on their own, through their own revenue. At least tearing it down is finally being promised. Please Miro, tear it down and save the taxpayers more years of waiting.

  2. Amazing that the voters have voted multiple times on the Moron Plant and the future is still unknown. Just goes to show how much voters really matter to the leaders in BTV.
    Put up a casino and restaurant and reap the tax dollars.

  3. I remember back 1990 or so when the area was designated an urban reserve and left to a future generation of Burlingtonians to decide how to proceed. It was the kind of vague, utopian thinking that characterized a lot of the early progressive era. Now the future is here, the progressives are (largely) gone and the Democratic Mayor is reduced to endorsing a crackpot scheme in (I believe) full expectation that it will fail and he’ll finally get to tear the damn eyesore down.

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