Winooski redevelopment plan falters: City history riddled with failed projects
- By Matt Sutkoski --- Free Press Staff Writer
WINOOSKI -- At first glance, Winooski might seem like a real estate developer's dream: plenty of open space downtown, proximity to major highways and employers, and the municipal government's eagerness to work with builders.
Yet an ambitious $165 million project to rebuild downtown Winooski with housing, a big office building, parking garage and other features is stalled for want of investors.
The latest plan was unveiled in 1999 with promises that construction would start in 2001. The Winooski Community Development Corp. is still struggling to line up financing and backers to create the new downtown, though those involved says the idea is still alive and viable.
"The folks from Winooski have a tremendous development opportunity here. I'm very optimistic with the progress they're making," said Kevin Dorn, Vermont Commerce and Community Development secretary.
A few blocks in the heart of Winooski were razed around 1970. Residents and city planners hoped the old buildings would be replaced by a gleaming new downtown. That hasn't happened.
Winooski has made its advances in fits and starts since 1970, residents, observers and civic boosters note. Once-abandoned woolen mills now house busy offices and apartments. Urban renewal, though controversial, brought new sewer systems, government buildings and federal money to Winooski. Adventurous developers are opening small businesses in town.
Winooski's location would seem to presage some liveliness. The University of Vermont is a short hop up the hill. St. Michael's College is just up the road in another direction.
The city also faces challenges. Many of Winooski's residents are elderly, poor, or immigrants recovering from hard lives in other countries.
Developers are skittish about large projects during an uncertain economy. Construction is more expensive in urban areas than in wide-open suburban tracts. As a result, the heart of the city remains undeveloped.
History
Winooski was a rough but thriving mill town until the 1950s, when the woolen factories that supported the city's economy closed, sending jobs out of Vermont.
The city languished into the 1960s, when urban renewal came into vogue. The federal Model Cities program called for the demolition of blighted city neighborhoods, to be replaced by new homes and businesses.
In Winooski, a whole neighborhood of apartments, stores, a diner and taverns along Main and East Allen streets fell to wrecking balls around 1970. Little new construction has replaced the old buildings.
To this day, Winooski residents debate whether the demolition improved the city or set the stage for later failures.
"It was all old houses. It was filthy. When I was coming down the hill, both sides of Main Street, it was all taverns. That's all there was," remembers Estelle Loiselle, 86, who worked with administrators of the Model Cities program.
Loiselle said the razing created a clean slate, which could still yield a new, busy downtown.
Others say the old buildings, many containing viable stores and apartments, could have been saved and rehabilitated, instead of leaving what turned out to be a lot that has sat mostly empty for more than three decades.
"Model Cities was a good program. The people running it had great ideas, but it ended up tearing the heart out of our city. It left us with a big parking lot," said Chuck Crowley, 75.
The program also brought Winooski new sewer pipes, new municipal offices, a fire station and a boatload of federal money.
Still, Winooski suffered. Burlington Mayor Peter Clavelle, who was Winooski's city manager from 1976 to 1979, remembers the Onion City's unemployment rate's reaching 25 percent during parts of the 1970s.
Clavelle also remembers efforts, with the help of federal dollars, to bring new life to abandoned mills around the city. During Clavelle's years in Winooski, developers rehabilitated the Champlain Mill, the Woolen Mill and the old Porter Screen Shop into stores, offices and housing.
In the early 1980s, old buildings along the west side of Main Street were renovated with the help of more federal grants. For a time, Winooski seemed on the brink of being chic. That, too, faded.
There was little movement until 1999, when the Winooski Community Development Corp. unveiled one of the largest development projects in state history. The project would bring 700 housing units, a new headquarters for Vermont Student Assistance Corp., a large parking garage and numerous other buildings and street improvements to downtown.
Challenges
The city faces the task of re-creating a downtown out of what is mostly a bumpy, cracked parking lot and a weedy riverbank. A major commuter route roars through the middle of the city, essentially cutting downtown in half.
Commuters moving to and from Burlington use Main Street to reach Interstate 89 in Colchester, or use East Allen Street in downtown Winooski to reach Vermont 15, IBM and suburbs around Essex.
The Winooski Community Development Corp. must somehow persuade financial backers to sign on to the project, keep potential tenants interested, and maneuver through a maze of financial and regulatory obstacles.
WCDC Executive Director Bill Niquette said he remains enormously optimistic that his organization will find the right investors for the project.
However, if no financial backer is found soon, VSAC could soon give up on the project, tearing a large hole in the redevelopment plan.
"It's difficult with any community to revitalize its downtown," said VSAC President and CEO Don Vickers. Downtowns need parking garages, which are expensive. A tangle of underground water, sewer and electrical lines must be sorted out. Property ownership can be complicated. Private investors must stay satisfied.
"When you're talking about private investors, they're going to invest in a project to make money," Vickers said. If a project doesn't look profitable, investors stay away.
Vickers said VSAC is desperate for more space and would leave the Winooski project only reluctantly. However, if investors who would rejuvenate the downtown project aren't found by June first, VSAC will look elsewhere for new office space, he said.
Mark Tigan, a former Winooski Community Develop Corp. director, said above all, Winooski leaders must keep up the momentum despite the challenges.
Residents must feel like a project is advancing, that the pieces are coming together to make the project work, he said.
"The excitement has to be driven from leadership within the community," Tigan said.
The vagaries of economics and federal decisions have at times sapped Winooski's redevelopment efforts, Mayor Clem Bissonette said.
Federal money dried up in the early 1980s, stalling efforts in downtown Winooski. A bad economy has interfered with, but not stopped, the current plan, he said.
"Prior to Sept. 11 (2001) we had three hotel developers interested in building 150 to 200 rooms," Bissonette said. "After 9/11 people aren't expanding because of the economy. People aren't traveling the way they were before Sept. 11. They're still being cautious."
That said, Bissonette said, signs suggest investors will line up to back the redevelopment.
Clavelle, who worked alongside Tigan as Winooski's city manager back in the '70s, said he's confident Winooski has the stuff to pull off the redevelopment.
"Don't be too hard on Winooski. It's a tough community that has worked real hard to pick itself up. There's been incredible progress made and there remains substantial challenges," Clavelle said.
Others wonder if Winooski would do better with a less ambitious project than the one now being fought for.
"I think the town would have evolved if it was small projects. When there is this grand plan of rebuilding the whole town, it's a much bigger situation in terms of getting people to invest in it. All the different elements have to be in place as I understand it," said Dan Higgins, a Winooski artist who documented the Model Cities urban renewal in the city.
At some point, Winooski might have to settle for something less than what was originally planned, Tigan said, a process he calls "closing."
"People lose interest, start to question the strategy. Closing is important and closing is not easy. Closing has to do with knowing you may not end up with the original dream you envisioned," Tigan said.
The Vermont Forum on Sprawl has applauded the Winooski project because it involves building up an urban area rather than laying pavement and brickwork in former farm fields.
However, Elizabeth Humstone of the forum said she sometimes worries about the risks of orchestrating a large project like Winooski's.
"I do think sometimes small-scale, incremental steps are easier to take than massive, large-scale steps that Winooski has been working on for so long," Humstone said.
Bissonette said the development corporation is looking at slowing the phasing of the planned development. The new VSAC building would go up first, followed slowly by the housing and other pieces of the development.
Winooski resident Ray Villemaire, 75, said he hoped whatever happens in the city's downtown will attract regular, moderate-income people seeking everyday needs. Otherwise, there's no reason to visit.
"I don't go that way anymore -- downtown -- much, because there's nothing there," Villemaire said.
Contact Matt Sutkoski at 660-1846 or msutkosk@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com
Redevelopment plan
-- COST: Roughly $165 million
-- FEATURES: New headquarters for Vermont Student Assistance Corp., parking garage, stores, offices and about 700 housing units.
-- STATUS: The main stumbling block is a $25 million U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development loan. The state must guarantee the loan, but has declined until developers win more backers. That process is continuing. Developers and state commercial officials say they are confident the backing will come together.
