Citizens for Responsible Zoning needs your help!

Citizens for Responsible Zoning (CRZ) needs your financial help to stand up to a global business giant whose proposed development in the south end of Burlington, Vermont, will devastate existing moderate and mixed income residential neighborhoods, and spoil the crown jewel of South Burlington’s parks, Red Rocks Park.

Burton Snowboards, in partnership with Higher Ground, has sought permission to create a 1,500-person concert venue at its Queen City Park Rd site, in the midst of residential neighborhoods and across the street from Red Rocks Park. Burton’s commercial use of the property at present coexists peacefully with the surrounding neighborhoods, but a 1500-person concert venue, closing at 2 am, 7 nights a week, is wrong for an area surrounded by the Park and neighborhoods inhabited by senior citizens, moderate income residents, and families with children who chose our homes in this area because of its quiet qualities adjacent to urban amenities.

The traffic and parking will overwhelm the Park, the existing small neighborhood streets (most of which have no sidewalks or bike lanes) and the one-lane bridge on Queen City Park Road. The late-night noise of up to 1,500 concert-goers happily pouring out of the building and walking to their cars across the neighborhood, and then starting up their cars, trucks and motorcycles, well after midnight, 7 nights a week, will tear apart the fabric of our community.

Burton refuses to agree to reasonable closing hours, and Burton refuses to pay for necessary safety improvements. Burton’s position has been that even though it will be introducing up to 1500 evening and nighttime visitors, 7 nights a week, to a residential neighborhood and Park, the lack of sidewalks and bike lanes is the City of Burlington’s problem.

The CRZ joined with the Voices for the Potash Brook Watershed Inc., a 501c3 nonprofit, to influence the scale and mitigate the negative impacts of this project. Members have fought Burton’s army of consultants and lawyers for over 2 years, hoping for them to consider long-term public and environmental health, and to meaningfully involve local residents in the process. Disappointingly, our concerns have been brushed aside by Burton.

CRZ and the Voices for the Potash Brook Watershed will continue to defend our neighborhoods in the most effective ways we can through Vermont’s legal channels. So far, we have multiple ongoing legal actions that include the appeal in Environmental Court of the Burton Conditional Use Permit issued by the Burlington DRB, and the ongoing Act 250 process (in Vermont, a citizen commission issues permits state wide for large developments such as this). We are using experienced expert witnesses to demonstrate these impacts, in the hope the citizen commission and the courts will impartially apply the law.

The Act 250 Commission is taking our concerns seriously; however, their ruling for either side will almost certainly be appealed to the Environmental Court, and possibly to the Vermont Supreme Court, requiring us to continue our fundraising efforts to pay our skilled attorney and noise and traffic experts.

Our goal is no less than preserving the quality of life for hundreds of residents surrounding the Burton campus, and we are counting on you to help support the hard work of the CRZ volunteers and our attorney. Our fundraising commitment is to efficiently allocate every donated dollar to obtain the maximum result! Your donation really makes a difference! Thank you!