Looking out over the Burlington waterfront Thursday afternoon, Peter Owens recalled his years in the mid-1980s as “a bright-eyed twenty-something” working as a young urban designer in the Queen City. Bernie Sanders was mayor, the Community and Economic Development Office (CEDO) was brand new, and Owens was helping to plan the city’s revitalization.
“At that point, this was all vacant wasteland,” Owens said, pointing from the Burlington Boathouse toward the now-bustling waterfront.
Owens was in town nearly three decades later for Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger’s announcement that he’d tapped Owens to lead CEDO, the city agency responsible for a broad swath of the mayor’s agenda — including continuing the revitalizaiton of the city’s lakeside property.
Calling Owens “a collaborator and listener who’s committed to building community,” Weinberger said the urban designer from Hanover, N.H., would be charged with restoring CEDO to a role as “think tank and innovator.” The mayor said he’s hoping the city council will confirm Owen to the $90,000-a-year position at its June 25 meeting with a start date of July 9. In the meantime, outgoing CEDO director Larry Kupferman, whose reappointment Weinberger declined to consider, will remain on the job.
Owens grew up in West Hartford, Conn. He holds a degree from Middlebury College and a Ph.D. in environmental planning and urban design from the University of California, Berkeley. After his time in Burlington in the mid-80s, Owens moved to the Bay Area and worked as an urban designer, eventually becoming a senior planner with the Presidio Trust. He and his family moved to the Upper Valley in 2002, where he now serves as a principal at his wife’s landscape architecture and planning firm.
Weinberger first met his nominee when the future mayor was presenting a development project to the Hanover Planning Commission, on which Owens serves, though the two do not know each other well. Owens was recommended to Weinberger by several mutual friends, the mayor said.
Owens, who has two high school-aged children, plans to rent an apartment in Burlington to comply with the city’s residency requirement for department heads, though his family will remain in the Upper Valley.
Owens called his new gig “a dream job” in which he would work for “a dream mayor.”
“I love this city. I’m not bullshitting,” he said. “It’s deeply engrained in my psyche.”
Photos: Top right: Owens (l) and Weinberger (r). Above left: The mayor’s team walking toward the Burlington Boathouse.
This article appears in Jun 13-19, 2012.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
Love his quote. Let’s get this started. The city needs it.
When someone says they’re not bullshitting, they’re bullshitting.
“I love this city. I’m not bullshitting,” he said. “It’s deeply engrained in my psyche.”
That’s weird, the love and the deeply engrained in my psyche part. Who speaks like that? (lots actually: http://tinyurl.com/7c3tm5w)
Although…in all fairness, that’s a tough decision to make, no? To leave your family (2 high school-aged kids) behind to work for Burlington and take a pay cut (assuming that he is a successful developer). I guess he really does love this city. I imagine, he’ll probably do a lot of commuting, back and forth to the Valley. As an aside, his carbon footprint will far exceed Kupferman’s , who was able to meander to and from work on foot.
The residency requirement is of questionable wisdom. If it is important enough to require it, why would you let somebody just obviously flaunt it like this?