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Burlington Reworking Northern Waterfront; Moran Plant Still Uncertain

Taylor Dobbs
/
VPR
Sen. Patrick Leahy and Mayor Miro Weinberger, flanked by local politicians and community members, broke ground on the new northern waterfront project.

Just north of Burlington’s Waterfront Park is a stretch of the city’s bike path that runs past the long-abandoned Moran power plant, with underbrush and sailboat storage blocking the view of Lake Champlain.

Tuesday, Burlington Mayor MiroWeinberger and Senator Patrick Leahy picked up ceremonial shovels and hard hats and broke ground on a construction project to totally re-work the city’s northern waterfront.

The renovation has been in the works for years.

“There was enormous complication in pretty much every axis imaginable in getting this built,” Weinberger said. “It required extensive collaboration and coordination amongst multiple city, state, and federal agencies.”

The $9 million project will redevelop what Weinberger categorized as one of the least attractive sections of the Burlington waterfront - a street will extend to a newly built Community Sailing Center, past a new skate park and along a re-aligned and freshly paved bike path.

Weinberger said the improvements will make the stretch much more attractive, but also position the city well for future improvements.

"It's going to create the access necessary for a great redevelopment of the Moran building if it's possible to achieve one." - Mayor Miro Weinberger

“This project is the foundation for all the progress that is going to come in the years ahead in the northern waterfront,” he said.

That foundation, Weinberger hopes, will lay the groundwork for the centerpiece of the northern waterfront. 

“It’s going to create the access necessary for a great redevelopment of the Moran building if it’s possible to achieve one,” he said.

That’s a pretty big “if.” Sitting between the existing Waterfront Park and the new construction project is one of the biggest obstacles to the mayor’s vision for the city waterfront.

After he scrapped the plans of his predecessor in 2012, Weinberger put together a coalition of community groups to launch one more effort to renovate the Moran plant with a combination of private money and Tax Income Financing – or TIF funds. Weinberger says this financing package is the last, best shot to do something with the old building.  

“If they can’t do it with having these local TIF resources during this narrow period of time, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to do it,” Weinberger said. “So that’s the basis of my position, which you know is that we’re going to take one more shot at it and we’re going to hope that it works this time and if it doesn’t we’re going to find some other great use of this site.”

The first deadline for that group comes on November 15, when it has to submit a report on where a big chunk of the project’s funding will come from.

Taylor was VPR's digital reporter from 2013 until 2017. After growing up in Vermont, he graduated with at BA in Journalism from Northeastern University in 2013.
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