For many, Battery Park is the ideal place to play on a warm, lazy day and now there will soon be more to see and do.

During the City Council meeting on May 1^st, 2000, Developer Malinda Moulton presented her plans to re-develop a little used section of the park that extends to College Street. That section would still be open to the public, and would also serve Moulton's new multi-purpose development on the corner of College and Lake Streets. With their new project Moulton is hoping to be forming a partnership with the city to redevelop the park, to make it much more public friendly, to have our black box drama theater open up on the park so there's a lot of drama going on. They are even talking about getting the symphony involved in a small little amphitheater we're creating so we can have music.

The city council approved the plans in hopes to reap rewards from the project as well. Officials have agreed to take part in the redevelopment, because they hope the space can provide one more reason for people to visit the city's waterfront. For the City, the benefit is that this is a partnership with a private developer, Main Street Landing. It will result in a significant expansion of Battery Park. It'll also result in private development activity on the waterfront that will broaden the tax base, bring economic vitality to that region.

The project will cost $200,000 dollars and will be split between Moulton and the city. If all goes well, work on the project could begin by September and completed in a year. The photo about is of Developer Malinda Moulton presenting her plans to the city council on May 1st, 2000. Malinda first presented the bottom development plan sketch of the Waterfront building and the presented the top sketch of the building that would be in the lower Battery Park area, which runs along Battery Street.

Main Street Landing Co. set to break ground on
$11.5 million project on Burlington's waterfront

By Leslie Wright
Free Press Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 18, 2003

Main Street Landing Co. is ready to break ground on an $11.5 million project on Burlington's waterfront.

The latest version of the project includes offices, a restaurant, a movie theater and performing arts space at the corner of Lake and College streets. The brick and stone building features a multi-peaked roof line that opens out onto Battery Park to the east. A 56-space underground parking garage is planned beneath the building.

Original plans for the project included a 35-room inn, but the anchor tenant fell through in late 2001. After a replacement could not be found the project was redesigned for offices.

The first tenant fell through because of the shaky economy in the wake of Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, said Melinda Moulton, head of Main Street Landing Co. The size of the inn, too large for a small operator and too small for a large operator, made finding a replacement difficult, she said.

Moulton wasn't willing to reconfigure the building to accommodate a larger inn.

"We could have given up the performing arts piece and made the whole thing an inn but the performing arts center is so important," she said. There might be an opportunity to build an inn in the future on land north of the project, she said.

The Lake and College Redevelopment Project is the second major waterfront project undertaken by Main Street Landing partners Moulton and Lisa Steele, who call themselves "redevelopers" because they build in urban settings where development has already occurred.

The last major project for the pair was in 1996 when Main Street Landing rehabilitated the Union Station train station and built the Wing building along the bike path and the Cornerstone building on the corner of Battery and Main streets.

The building is scheduled to be open in July 2005. Contact Leslie Wright at 660-1841 or lwright@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com

Groundbreaking

• WHO: Main Street Landing Co.
• WHAT: Groundbreaking for Lake and College Redevelopment Project
• WHERE: Corner of Lake and College streets
• WHEN: 11 a.m. July 1