The downtown site was ready for the work, Sinex told Seven Days in an email. Not moving forward would delay the project up to three months and would mean higher costs for construction, he told reporters before the council’s vote.
The council gave Sinex permission to lay the foundation of the proposed 14-story building before all the project’s funding and contracts were in place. Sinex said at the time that he planned to start the foundation work within two weeks.
Nearly six weeks later, he has not filed the paperwork to get a city permit for the foundation, according to Burlington’s Department of Public Works.
“We’re losing patience,” said Jeff Glassberg, a consultant who is monitoring the project for Burlington. The city is encouraging the developer to “move ahead,” he said.
The mixed-use development is being built where much of Burlington Town Center mall once stood. The mall was demolished earlier this summer, but the site has seen little activity since. Plans call for housing, retail and office space.
“It’s a huge project,” Glassberg acknowledged. “But I’m sorta like ‘Get at it, guys. You’re the experts.'”
Mayor Miro Weinberger, who championed the project despite opposition from citizens’ groups, said Tuesday that he has grown “concerned about the lack of progress on the site.”
“The City has made good on all of its commitments to the project,” Weinberger said in a statement to Seven Days. “It is time for the developers to act and begin site construction, and to communicate their progress to the public regularly.”
Sinex attributed the delays to a disagreement with construction manager PC Construction, which has slowed the drafting of a new contract with the South Burlington firm to oversee the next portion of the project.
“They’re up to snuff now, and they’re doing everything a guy like me expects,” he said, calling himself a “tough hombre” to work for. “It’s a question of getting all the little ducks in order.”
He said he expects to finalize the contract and seek the permits for the foundation within two weeks.
Sinex defended his work, saying that he had been “completely, 100 percent” upfront with the city.
City councilors and Glassberg said they weren’t losing faith in Sinex. After all, Glassberg said, Sinex has already made substantial progress and continues to express “full commitment to the project.”
Still, Glassberg called the situation “pretty odd.”
“It’s way too quiet over there,” he said. On Tuesday afternoon, a sole excavator dug in the soil of the huge and empty lot.
City officials say they’re in the dark about reasons for the delay. “We granted the amendment to pour the foundation and there was some controversy,” said Council President Kurt Wright (R-Ward 4). “We want to understand why he hasn’t.”
When Councilor Jane Knodell (P-Central District) was council president last year, she said Tuesday, she pushed for quarterly updates from Sinex. “We never quite got there. It’s not too late to fix that and improve that,” she said.
The project has already faced several delays. A citizen’s group filed a suit over it. Last winter, workers found asbestos in part of a roof of the old mall, slowing down the demolition process.
Both Wright and Knodell said they hope to have Sinex update the council next Monday. “We’re trying to be good working partners. Certainly, I think Don should keep us informed,” Wright said. “There is definitely a concern.”
If Sinex doesn’t draw the foundation permit by November 1, Councilor Dave Hartnett (D-North District) said he will seek to allow city residents to park in the vacant dirt lot.
“I hate to leave that area boarded up,” Hartnett said, noting that it’s better to allow holiday shoppers to make use of the space.
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This project is built on a lie by a practiced liar and enabled by a liar in the Mayor’s office. Miro rammed this 14 story unicorn down our throats and now he has to answer for it. Of course City Council will do nothing about this except voice their “concern”.
Jane Knodell seems to be the problem to every solution. Her agenda of harming the public good for no good reason is mystifying. Is it possible to impeach a city councilor? If not, Id like to add creating that law to the agenda. The corruption or gross incompetence of her entrenched confederacy of dunces has severely harmed all residents. Jane Knodell is a blight that needs to be excised from our beautiful city.
Did this delay give Sinex the time to get the funding he didn’t have and needed before Weinberger looked the other way in allowing him to start the foundation?
You think Newport has big hole in its downtown…..
My experience is when you don’t have money to pay contractors they don’t work?
Burlington has bigger issues than running there sewer and storm water together.
It’ll take longer to complete this project than building the south end connector.
Ship out of luck
“Miro rammed this 14 story unicorn down our throats”
A lie. The voters of Burlington voted for it. As did the city councilors who are elected by the voters of Burlington. As did the voters who re-elected Miro as Mayor.
There was some funny stuff regarding the timing of that election and in how quickly Miro got it on the ballot and if I recall, during a month where voter turnout is typically lower. There were several somewhat shady dealings with the mall vote and I would definitely say Miro pushed it through.
Why doesn’t the city just sue Don the con and get another contractor and not one of miros friends??? That would be more reasonable then just waiting around for something to happen! City hall can be so stupid sometimes
Who is supplying the popcorn for this dog and pony show? Miro saw all the $$$ in Sinex’s eyes and fell like a ton of bricks. Now we’re left with a hole in the ground and the incredible disappearing Sinex. Figures. When all you do is hustle for corporate sponsors, you get what you deserve.
The external factors that have control over this project do not support his–or the Mayor’s–optimistic view.
10-year treasuries continue to rise, now yielding well above 3.2% (nearly 100 basis point rise vs year ago) and the Dow’s dropping 600 points as I type this. We’re being hit with the double-whammy of rising interest rates on a market correction of US equity prices.
What happens on Wall Street will affect this project dramatically, and the City Council and Mayor have refused to acknowledge that. The Council dragged on the permitting process longer than they needed to, adding unnecessary requirements and doing nothing to mitigate the type of downside risk Sinex is experiencing in global financial markets.
Hello Newport?
Who does Sinex sound like when he blames local construction company for delaying project? “Theyre up to snuff now, and they’re doing everything a guy like me expects,” he said, calling himself a “tough hombre” to work for.
Tough hombre wasn’t paying the contractor. That sounds familiar too.
I’m in the Vermont construction business. Perhaps six weeks ago my commercial decorating company was contacted by PC, Inc’s arch-rival, Whiting-Turner, to price the City Place project. I thought this was an exercise in futility and told the W-T estimators that in my opinion Don Sinex was using them to keep PC honest. Then I heard that PC lost 70 million bucks in their last fiscal year. It could be that they reviewed their deal with him and determined that it wasn’t profitable enough.
Later, while talking to a PC estimator about a different job, I was told Don doesn’t have the necessary funding. You can’t do work on promises alone. How embarrassing, huh?
To BDE:
One person’s gossip is another person’s discussion of possible explanations for the strange behavior of City Place’s developer. To not press on with the construction when everything appears to be in place is strange behavior. Mr. Sinex is not about to tell a member of the Great Unwashed (like me) why the project has stalled, hence the speculation, or what you, BDE, would deem destructive gossip. You do realize this is a public project? A comment on a public project in a public forum is free speech, BDE. Get over yourself.
@Eric J – “To not press on with the construction when everything appears to be in place is strange behavior”
No, this is not strange behavior. Sinex admittedly does not have financing for this project. The current state of global credit markets and interest rates are not conducive to getting the $170m loan he needs. It is not “strange behavior” to have a project stalled if there’s no financing.
Proposed projects fail all the time because conditions change, rendering the project no longer economically feasible. You can discuss and speculate all you want, but all your find is Economics 101. Sinex currently has enough capital to pour the foundation, but why on earth would he do that if he may need to pull out all together in the coming months?
“There was some funny stuff regarding the timing of that election and in how quickly Miro got it on the ballot and if I recall, during a month where voter turnout is typically lower. There were several somewhat shady dealings with the mall vote and I would definitely say Miro pushed it through.”
Got any evidence for your vague insinuations of wrongdoing?
Can you lease define “funny stuff” and provide evidence?
Can you identify the “shady dealings” with the mall vote and provide evidence?
As I recall, there was no legal requirement to put the mall zoning issues out to the voters, but the anti-everything group absolutely screamed for a citywide vote. So the city scheduled a vote and the zoning issue was approved. It was only after they lost the vote that the anti-everything people complained that there shouldn’t have been a vote.
KnowYourAssumptions-
I don’t know why you keep circling back to the 2016 DMUC zoning overlay vote. That is rather irrelevant to the discussion here and significant downside risk Sinex is now experiencing that’s causing the work stoppage.
What we’re commenting on is how Miro and the Democratic councilors who pushed for both an intense public “vetting” process and major concessions of the developer–but also claimed to be in support of the developer the whole time–but now the oxygen has been sucked out of the room they look like idiots.
The BTVCC Dems (and to a lesser extent the mayor) kept pushing and pushing Sinex, asking him to do things that would not be asked of such an investor in other cities. And now, Jay Powell and the Board of Governors have “Gone loco” this project is no longer economically feasible….otherwise Sinex would be getting the financing he needs and putting contractors to work. Our local policy makers should’ve recognized the amount of risk that rising interest rates and other external factors could pose to this project. They didn’t, they dragged out the permitting process and added in unneeded bureaucracy to the Development Agreement, pushing the economic feasibility of this project to the brink. Even developers as bullish as Sinex have only so much appetite for risk.
@ Defrancis:
I am responding to the very first comment, which claimed that the Mayor rammed this project down our throats and that he is a liar, and the sixth comment, which claimed that there was funny stuff and shady dealings in the vote.
Both comments are false, and are the kind of wild, paranoid claims that we would expect to hear from Trump.
Seems to me having more actual business people with some grit (I’d say “balls” but would be accused of being sexist) are needed on Burlington’s city council. Maybe then, we can turn around this declining, NIMBY, too PC too often for its own good city.