Supreme Court Approves Demolition of Burlington Cathedral

The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on Pine Street in Burlington Credit: File: Luke Awtry

Updated on December 9, 2024.

The state’s highest court on Friday ruled that Burlington’s former Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception can be torn down.

The Vermont Supreme Court ruling upheld the city’s decision last year to issue a demolition permit for the cathedral, which was built in the 1970s. The decision says a lower court properly interpreted state law that prohibits local zoning rules from interfering with the use of religious buildings.

“It’s not usually that you win on all the points that you argue, but that appears to be what happened here,” said John Franco, a Burlington attorney representing the parish.

The ruling puts a cap on a nearly two-year legal entanglement involving the parish and preservationists, who fought to keep the building standing.

“The court unanimously decided that anything in the name of the church is beyond question for regular citizens,” Ron Wanamaker, a plaintiff and member of the nonprofit Preservation Burlington, told Seven Days. “There’s no room to question that, so we’re going to lick our wounds, we’re going to be disappointed and we’re going to lose an iconic, modernist landscape in the heart of Burlington.”

The cathedral, at 20 Pine Street, was designed by renowned modernist architect Edward Larrabee Barnes. Adorned with a grid of locust trees, its grounds were planned by Daniel Kiley, a prominent landscape architect.

The cathedral closed in 2018 after parishioners could no longer afford to maintain it. The parish trust listed the property for sale in summer 2019 for $8.5 million.

In January 2023, the city Development Review Board issued a permit to tear down the cathedral, a move the parish said would deconsecrate the property for future use. City officials said they had to grant the permit because state law limits zoning review on houses of worship. At the time, the property was under contract to be sold to an undisclosed private developer.

A group of residents sued to stop the tear-down, alleging that the zoning law is unconstitutional because it affords special treatment to religious buildings over secular ones. They also attempted to force the parish to disclose the future buyer, but a Superior Court judge ruled that any development plans were irrelevant to the matter at hand.

The Supreme Court agreed. In its 10-page ruling, the court said demolishing the cathedral would be a religious act.

“The Trust did not state that it is demolishing the structures on behalf of the future buyer,” the decision says. “Instead, as the Trust indicated, the potential buyer would have to submit its own applications for any future development.”

Refusing to grant the permit “would interfere with the Trust’s religious deconsecration of the Cathedral,” the decision says.

Franco, the parish’s attorney, said the building will likely come down this winter. The original buyer backed out when the case went to the Supreme Court, he said, but the parish has an agreement with a new developer who would need to apply for zoning permits once the building is gone.

“It should be a relief to the city,” Franco said. “The last thing the city needs is a number of un-repurposed properties lying around.”