Sinex still wants a smart growth exemption from Act 250 for the $230 million makeover of the aging downtown mall and said Monday he will apply for the waiver later this year. He said he will take the hotel out of his mall-redesign plans.
He called Monday’s jurisdictional opinion “absolutely meaningless” and said it wouldn’t affect his immediate designs for the 40-year-old mall in the heart of Burlington. “We sought a clarification only for purposes of giving us options in the future,” Sinex said.
The most recent publicly revealed plans, presented last week, didn’t show or mention a hotel. They call for demolition of the current mall and transformation of the space into a mixed-use complex with 274 new units of housing, which the developer has said would be include both condos and rental units, with 20 percent designated as affordable housing. The plans also include 218,000 square feet of retail space, 350,000 square feet of office space and 948 parking spaces on three above-ground levels, after the current 575-space garage is torn down.
But a hotel has clearly been pondered by the developer. In a Dec. 14 letter to environmental regulators, Sinex’s lawyer Brian Dunkiel said the redevelopment may “also include a new hotel with approximately 100-150 rooms.”
The letter to Peter Keibel, coordinator of the District #4 Environmental Commission, sought a jurisdictional opinion on how adding hotel units might affect Sinex’s plans to seek an Act 250 exemption as a “mixed-use, priority housing project.” To qualify for the exemption, a mixed-use project in Burlington would need to have fewer than 275 units of housing.
Keibel’s opinion stated that the hotel units would not be counted as housing units and would not push the total units over the threshold in the exemption. Keibel said, however, the hotel units would disqualify the project for the exemption in a different way. They would not meet the exemption’s criteria for commercial space. “I do not find that the hotel rooms would satisfy the requirements as a commercial part of the ‘Mixed Use’ component of a Mixed Use Priority Housing Project,” wrote Keibel. As a result, a project with the hotel units would have to go through Act 250, Keibel said.
Sinex says the question is moot at this point — and the hotel is off the drawing board.
“Right now there’s no demand for a hotel. Five years from now I don’t know what the demand’s going to be,” Sinex said. “I wanted to understand how they would interpret a hotel unit.”
Sinex said the exemption from Act 250 would bring efficiency and predictability to the process. He will apply for the exemption after the proposal goes though city reviews, which could take a year.
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If Sinex wants an exemption to build a monstrosity in the middle of downtown, then I’m sure Weinberger will give him one. He might as well put in for livable wage exemptions while he’s at it. Think of all the low paying jobs maintaining a hotel, parking garage, and apartment complex is going to create.
How does it work to have 20%, or 54 units, of housing designated “affordable”? Will these units all be built the same size, lower quality materials, have the worst access, or the worst frontage for views/windows? Are these units going to be sequestered from the rest of the “market rate” housing or will they be interspersed? Will any of these “affordable” units be available for purchase or will they be rental only? Will the proximity to the “affordable” units impact the value and cost of the “market” rate units?
A Monstrosity? Have you ever been in that mall? Its an embarrassment to our beautiful city. Tear down the abomination and get some stores in here to keep this towns center alive and well. Change can be good when your town center is half empty and looks like its been abandoned for years. I am certainly looking forward to the new building and all that it has to offer.
I’m all for updating the mall and making downtown a little nicer. If we are going to exempt Acts and hand out permits to build, why not create something that will help locals instead of something that will simply make a few people a little richer and create more jobs that don’t support the cost of living in Vermont?
Do you think the local shops in town pay enough to support the cost of living? I owned a store for 6 years and its a struggle.I can guarantee no local shops in town have more than a handful of employees and pay them barely enough to get by. I am all for local shops and supporting locals obviously and this new building is not just for “big companies.” There are some local businesses in the mall currently and will also be available to get new spaces in a nicer mall that would drive traffic to their business and in the end benefit these shops and locals as well. Mark, here’s a quarter, go buy a clue!
I’m not advocating we create more local shops that can barely make it. For what it’s worth, many local shops do well so maybe the problem with yours was, well, you. I’m not interested in giving shops that pay low wages slightly more foot traffic while some developer comes in and cleans up. Save your quarter. Give one of your employees a “raise.” We need to do a lot better than creating parking lot attendant, janitor, and clerk jobs if we are going to allow someone to come in and get a bunch of exemptions to redo downtown.