A long-vacant house in Burlington’s South End that was destroyed by fire was finally demolished on Tuesday following a three-year battle between its owner and the city. Burlington’s planning and zoning office had asserted that the house, at 189 South Champlain St., was once part of the city’s historic waterfront district and refused to allow it to be torn down.

  

Developer Anne Rothwell, who purchased the house four year ago, claims it was already in “tear-down” condition when she acquired it. Rothwell had initially planned to renovate the space and tack on an addition, when squatters ripped plywood and polycarbonate off the windows and doors, littered the inside with beer cans, and used condoms and drug paraphernalia. One even ran an extension cord from the house to a shed and set up camp. In December 2009, someone finally broke in and started a fire for cooking or warmth, which gutted the house and rendered it uninhabitable.

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Staff Writer Ken Picard is a senior staff writer at Seven Days. A Long Island, N.Y., native who moved to Vermont from Missoula, Mont., he was hired in 2002 as Seven Days’ first staff writer, to help create a news department. Ken has since won numerous...

6 replies on “VIDEO: “Historic” South End House Demolished After Three-Year Battle”

  1. A guy once wrote a story about the nightmare of the Burlington (anti)development bureaucracy. The guy’s name was Kafka, I think. No, maybe it was Orwell.

  2. Where was Code Enforcement when this destruction was going on? Did the owner have a Vacant Building Permit?

  4. I don’t understand why the Planning and Zoning people are so determined to keep ugly, deteriorating buildings around… do you really want Burlington to look like one big ghetto?

  6. These are the same people who wanted The Spot to take down its wind turbine. These are the same people who wouldn’t let Alan Newman put an addition on his house. These are the same people who lost a court case because they told some homeowner who was re-siding his house that the “reveal” on the clapboards had to be 3″ instead of 4″. These are the same people who won’t let you put modern, heat efficient windows in an old buiding. These are the same people who won’t let you put a solar panel on a house with a slate roof.

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