It’s not just some Queen City residents who are unhappy with the Burlington City Council’s decision Monday to approve a South End zoning change.
Members of the city council in neighboring South Burlington are steamed about the vote, which will allow Burton Snowboards to move forward with a plan to host music venue Higher Ground at its Industrial Parkway campus.
In a strongly worded email Tuesday morning, South Burlington City Council vice chair Meaghan Emery chastised all 12 Burlington councilors for not involving their neighbors in the discussion. She explained that SoBu leaders, busy with various projects, hadn’t learned of the plan until last week. At that point, Emery and a colleague emailed her Burlington counterparts, while SoBu council chair Helen Riehle contacted Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger’s office on Monday to voice her concern, according to Emery.
The proposed music venue abuts the South Burlington town line, its popular Red Rocks Park and its historic — and quiet — Queen City Park neighborhood on Lake Champlain’s Shelburne Bay. About 75 residents there signed a petition urging leaders in both cities to oppose the plan for Higher Ground to relocate.
“As you know, sometimes decisions take a little longer than planned, and when dozens of residents (the majority of an adjacent neighborhood) present a petition and three South Burlington Councilors (the majority of our Council) reach out to you with concerns, the fact that you simply pushed it through frankly speaks of disrespect and lack of due diligence,” Emery wrote in her email.
Chief among Emery’s concerns, she told Seven Days in a phone interview later Tuesday, is the possibility that drunken concertgoers will spill into Red Rocks Park, which she called the “crown jewel” of the suburban city. Emery worries the park could be trashed or worse: People could hurt themselves jumping into Lake Champlain off the park’s infamous cliffs, which has led to fatalities.
“It’s a recipe that really spells disaster,” Emery said. “I really would have liked for us to have been able to have a conversation about that, or at least have them reach out and hear from our recreation and parks director, our police, our public works director to really understand the issues that we’re facing at this park.”
She also worries the noise will disturb her constituents, as will the traffic. There are only two ways to access Industrial Avenue: from the north, via Home Avenue, and from the south, via Queen City Park Road, which marks the Burlington-South Burlington line.
Emery said the South Burlington council also met Monday night, and one councilor floated the idea of closing Queen City Park Road to traffic on nights Higher Ground hosts an event. The road includes a narrow one-lane bridge that could be hazardous for drivers leaving Burton, she said.
“When you’re coming back after being at a venue where alcohol has been consumed, you’re having fun — accidents can happen when it’s not the best road conditions,” Emery said. “We’re really looking for that to be addressed, and hopefully, it will be.”
Emery said Burlington’s treatment of South Burlington in this instance aligned with how the Queen City has acted concerning governance of the Burlington International Airport. Though the airfield is located in South Burlington, Burlington owns and operates BTV.
The fraught relationship came to a head in recent years when Burlington approved the purchase and teardown of more than 145 homes under an FAA-funded program to compensate homeowners when airport noise is deemed intolerable under federal standards. South Burlington had no say in the matter, though it lost a chunk of affordable housing stock — and taxpayers.
“It would have been nice if we had had a conversation and been with them at the table before the decision had been made,” Emery said of the zoning issue. “We’re going to be directly impacted, so we should have been at the table.”
Contacted on Tuesday, Burlington City Council President Kurt Wright (R-Ward 4) told Seven Days that he hadn’t heard from any South Burlington officials and seemed incredulous that the suburban city would deign to meddle in Queen City affairs.
“Why would South Burlington be advising Burlington about what to do with its zoning regulations?” he said.
“Wherever your town line is, there’s another town right next to it,” he added.
While the zoning change allows Burton to open a music venue, the plans are far from set in stone. The business must first submit a proposal to the Burlington Development Review Board for a conditional use permit.
Justin Worthley, Burton’s senior vice president of human resources, said it’ll take the company three to six months to design the venue and compile all the information needed for the review. Burton must address five criteria: traffic, noise, environmental impacts, neighborhood impacts and the aesthetics of the building, Worthley said.
“[T]raffic and neighborhood is where we need to spend the most time,” he said.
Burton has already gotten bids to have an engineering firm conduct a traffic study that will model how cars will move both with and without the Champlain Parkway. Construction of the road is scheduled to begin by the end of the year. The parkway would likely ease traffic congestion through South End neighborhoods, including around Burton’s campus.
Worthley said the company is happy to work with residents and the DRB to make sure all the concerns about the facility are properly addressed. He hopes that the process would be done in time for the music venue to open by the end of 2020.
“We’ll definitely be open to talking with neighbors about concerns, and what can we do, and how do we get to a conclusion that keeps this moving forward,” Worthley said.
While the Burton veep said he’d heard from residents of Queen City Park, he hadn’t heard from South Burlington city councilors. Worthley wondered if those officials were motivated to speak out by a desire to keep Higher Ground on Williston Road — though Emery denied that was a factor.
“If they need a better spot, I understand they have to look for a better spot,” she said.
Members of the South Burlington Council will show up at Burlington DRB meetings in the hopes of having their concerns heard, Emery said.
“You can expect to see us there since you rejected our outreach last night,” she wrote in her email. “We will make the strongest case possible in order to persuade the DRB and the public that Higher Ground is not a good fit for the area adjacent to Queen City Park neighborhood and Red Rocks Park. Believe me when I say, I wish it could have been handled differently.”
Related Stories
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
I agree that it’s a bad place to move and I’m sure there are more vacant buildings closer to downtown that could be rented out. I think Burton and HG are just looking at the money end of it. Burton would be making money and HG would be saving on money. I don’t think they are thinking with a straight mind!
I guess South Burlington should have thought of things like that before they succeeded from Burlington. Sorry, SoBummers, you dont get a say in what Burlington decides to do, because you chose to give up your say in the affairs of Burlington. You should have thought to buy the airport, too, back then, but you were too busy whipping around Confederate flags and making your high schools mascot a traitorous Confederate Army colonel. The people of South Burlington have no one else but themselves to blame for this. Tough nuggets, Rebels.
I agree that if it’s on the border, and will affect S. Burlington so much, they should have a say in this issue. I also agree there could be better spots to place the venue. The Hannaford’s spot is better suited, and larger too. I agree with the person who cited the areas now adjacent to music venues.
As far as the difference between 55 db and 75 db, the difference is 4X the noise level. Every 10 db means twice as loud. If folks exit the venue and drunkenly walk away (having audible fun), we’re talking about 90 db in the street. [We hear it on College St. regularly, from people leaving the waterfront, walking up the hill towards Church St. and beyond. Some of them actually howl.]
I also agree S. Burlington should have a say in Airport issues. There should indeed be a regional planning commission. We’re all in this together.
As a long time patron of HG from its origin to now, I don’t get this move. That space is so far off any beaten path. It has nothing to do with the hip area of the south end (Pine St). I wish HG well but the move is a bummer and a head scratcher.
We need regional planning and zoning. It’s not okay that South Burlington and South End residents’ valid concerns can be ignored just because an invisible boundary line passes between them and the potential problem. Kurt Wright’s callousness about the situation is symptomatic. I wonder how he would like it if I moved in next door to him, played loud music audible at all hours in his house, blocked his street with visitors’ cars, littered his lawn, peed in his bushes, and when he complains, I say, “So what? The activity isn’t on your property.”
Excessive noise is a public health issue and a public nuisance, especially when it comes to low-frequency base. Yet for those who are victimized by this, there is little relief as any complaint occurs AFTER the incident has occurred and their ‘right to quiet enjoyment’ has been disturbed. Just ask the renters and home owners who live within 2-3 blocks of Nectar’s or Lower Church Street about the lack of response for years from the city and local businesses. What again is shocking is that the City Council didn’t stipulate an acceptable noise level for the zoning change (to my knowledge). 75db is quite different than 55db. Hence, this has the potential to negatively affect property values for those living on SouthCrest Drive and Arthur Court and elsewhere, not to mention their quality of life. So, hopefully HG will be a good neighbor and proactively insulate, insulate and insulate again, against sound permeating its structure and negatively impacting its neighbors. As to traffic impact, South Burlington could always have a police cruiser sit at the intersection of QCP Road, Industrial Pkwy and Central Avenue doing sobriety checks in the interest of public safety. Traffic would very soon come to a trickle here as patrons would quickly come to use Home Avenue.
Once again if So. Burl has a complaint about the airport then buy it and it will become your problem. No can’t afford that.
Time to put your money where your mouth is. Not likely to happen!
Burton’s HQ is not a great place for higher ground but nor is an abandoned movie theater off Williston Road. A large for-profit music venue should be downtown, limiting potential for DUI’s as patrons can walk to other establishments after the show. The problem is a music venue will never be able to afford 15,000 square feet of real estate downtown. (Flynn is a non-profit and it’s mission is programming/education; entertainment is not their business’s primary division).
I can’t believe the SB city council are fear-mongering invalid, unsubstantiated hypothetical safety concerns as a last-ditch effort to keep Higher Ground in South Burlington. No, they simply want to keep their hands on Higher Ground’s substantial gross receipts tax revenue from ticket and alcohol sales. Councilor Emery can whine as she wants. We all see through that and know her only concern is the loss of tax revenue.
I believe South Burlington is right to complain. It has a real stake in this issue so should have had a voice . Where a venue like that really belongs is in the old KMart plaza (or the soon-to-be vacant Hannaford’s off opposite Lowe’s). A much better use for the Burton warehouse is something like a giant “maker space” or something like that .
I wonder if this means Burlington gets to weigh in as South Burlington development continues rapidly around Williston Road and Dorset St, causing huge traffic pileups throughout the county. I’m sure So.Burl. would be happy to run its planning and zoning decisions by the BTV Mayor in any areas adjacent to the city, right?