This commentary is by Evan Gould of Burlington. He is a husband, father, software engineer and housing advocate. He is a member of the Burlington Development Review Board and Vermonters for People Oriented Places, a grassroots organization dedicated to building affordable, resilient communities.
I appreciate Devin Colman’s creative way of fitting a five-story building on the site of the cathedral parking lot in his opinion piece and sympathize with the desire to conserve the landscape architecture.
That said, the Preservation Burlington proposal fails to capture the land use potential of this lot. It does not meet the diocesan demands for deconsecration of their holy site, it’s financially untenable, and it underutilizes the land. To see why it fails I think it’s important to understand it in the context of the zoning rules for this particular location…