In November 2014, a smooth-talking New York City businessman announced plans to transform Burlington’s aging downtown mall into high-rise apartment buildings with shops and a rooftop park. Don Sinex called his vision “CityPlace Burlington” and said it would revitalize downtown.
Sinex tore down the old mall but then stopped building altogether, leaving behind a stagnant construction site that locals nicknamed “the Pit.” It took five years and an entirely new development team to get work started again.
Next month, a portion of the redesigned CityPlace will finally open with a new name: Burlington Square. Its hotel rooms and apartments are going for top dollar, prices that the developers say befit a luxury high-rise.
But the opening comes at a much more challenging time than when the massive project was first planned. Those who can afford to live and stay there will find themselves in a downtown core that is struggling with a rise in property crime, open drug use and homelessness — problems that have hurt businesses and driven away some visitors who once filled city streets.
In a way, then, the success of Burlington Square could be a barometer for whether Vermont’s largest city can overcome its tarnished reputation.
The hotel rooms and apartments are going for top dollar, prices that the developers say befit a luxury high-rise.
The developers and city officials seem confident the building is a step in the right direction. They see the project as the first sign of new life in an area that’s ripe for redevelopment.
“This space wasn’t a space that the public could enter or even walk through or past,” said Kara Alnasrawi, director of the city’s Community & Economic Development Office. Opening it back up, she said, “just adds to more vitality.”
Situated just off the Church Street Marketplace, Burlington Square will consist of two buildings with a combined 350-plus apartments, 342 hotel rooms and 42,000 square feet of ground-floor retail. Once complete, the project will create an entirely new city block by rebuilding portions of St. Paul and Pine streets that were severed from the city grid by the former mall.
In late August, the worksite was buzzing with activity. At the nearly-finished South Tower on Bank Street, workers were laying carpet, hanging cabinets and finishing electrical work in the well-appointed apartments. The first batch, on the eighth floor, will open on October 1, with all 53 available by year’s end.
So far, just one person has signed up for an apartment, and only one tenant has leased retail space on the ground floor.
Downstairs, managers at the AC Marriott hotel were making final hires ahead of an intensive, 10-day staff training — the final push before a planned September 18 opening. In the hotel lounge, staff were stocking a generous breakfast bar and eagerly awaiting the delivery of an imported German meat slicer. One of the project owners, Dave Farrington, was making parking arrangements for busloads of tourists.
“Fall is just busier, beautiful and busier,” he said, assuring two hotel managers that guests would come flocking.
“Oh, yes, Dave mentioned the leaf lovers,” one of the managers said, then quickly corrected himself: “Leaf peepers!”
Farrington joined the project team in 2020, along with fellow businessmen Al Senecal of Omega Electric and Scott Ireland of S.D. Ireland. The trio eventually bought out Sinex’s shares and brought on Giri Hotel Management, which owns 55 hotels in five states, to operate both the AC franchise and the Cambria hotel slated for the North Tower. Now just a steel frame, that building will ultimately host more than 300 apartments, including some reserved for student housing, when it opens in spring 2027. The entire site, including the remade roads, is slated for completion in summer 2027.
The redevelopment project is surrounded by potential others. On nearby Pine Street, crews are demolishing the former Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in preparation for sale. Next door, on Cherry Street, a former state office building is under contract to an undisclosed buyer.
There’s also the second phase of CityPlace, a planned redevelopment of the former L.L.Bean store and what remains of the mall, a storefront that faces the Marketplace. Sinex, who still owns a majority share of that venture, has gotten permits to build two apartment buildings there, one three stories and the other five. He told Seven Days last month that he intends to redesign the project to make the tallest building 12 stories.
Burlington Square has set a high bar for whatever follows. The apartments have top-of-the-line features: stainless-steel appliances, blue tile backsplashes and vinyl plank flooring in blond wood tones. Most units have glass-walled balconies, and those on the top floors have sizable terraces that provide unobstructed views of the city skyline or Lake Champlain, depending on their location. A rooftop pizza oven will be available for every tenant’s use.
During the city’s annual 3rd of July celebration, “those terraces will be packed with tenants,” Farrington said.
Rents for most new studio apartments in Chittenden County are priced between $1,550 to $1,950 per month, according to data from Allen, Brooks & Minor, a South Burlington real estate appraisal and analytics firm. Most newly built two-bedrooms are going for $2,300 to $2,800 per month, the report says. But there are outliers, namely those offering better views and more amenities.
Burlington Square will be one of them. Rents range from $1,950 per month for a studio to $6,800 per month for a two-bed, two-bath unit on the top floor. Parking and utilities, which include central air-conditioning, cost extra.
By city ordinance, up to a quarter of new units in buildings with five or more apartments must be priced for lower-income tenants. But the South Tower has none; instead, between 75 and 80 units will be built at the North Tower. A development agreement with the city requires the units to be open by June 2026, but Farrington plans to ask for an extension.
Farrington says the high rents partly reflect the cost of construction. Tariffs on European goods pushed the price of windows from $2 million to $2.2 million. Those on Canadian steel, which was used to frame the towers, added $1 million to the project budget, he said.
Using premium materials, such as solid marble for countertops, also justifies higher rents, said Laura Wilson, vice president of property and asset management at S.D. Ireland, which is managing the rentals.
“We build a higher quality, and I would say that this property, it’s just in that tier,” she said.
Neither Alnasrawi, the CEDO director, nor Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak would comment directly on the rents at Burlington Square. Rather, they emphasized that leases are private agreements between landlords and tenants.
In a statement, Mulvaney-Stanak said her office is working on boosting affordable housing in the city, including by partnering with private developers to redevelop a neighborhood in the South End and the area around the shuttered Memorial Auditorium on Main Street. Specific plans for both projects, including apartment counts, haven’t been announced.
Wilson acknowledged that Burlington Square’s rents are high for some. But she also isn’t concerned about driving away potential tenants, or that only one person to date has shown real interest. Without final city permits — or a firm completion date for the upper-floor units — S.D. Ireland hasn’t offered formal leases, only paperwork for tenants interested in signing one. The company also hasn’t launched a marketing campaign, which Wilson said will highlight the convenience of downtown living.
Location is typically a hot selling point, but in Burlington’s case, it could be a hurdle. Homelessness and open drug use are ever-present in the downtown, and recent violent incidents prompted city councilors to order up a larger police presence, particularly in City Hall Park. At Burlington Square, people were trespassing in the building’s first-floor lobby before more secure locks were installed.
“It’s definitely a different beast that we’re trying to navigate,” said Alyssa Buckley Couture, S.D. Ireland’s director of marketing.
City officials, however, say redeveloping a section of downtown can only help draw more people there. Besides the hotel lounge, the South Tower has restrooms, meeting spaces and a terrace that will be open to the general public. Some community groups have already expressed interest in meeting there.
A café on the ground floor could also be a draw. Jitters, a Massachusetts-based company started by three University of Vermont graduates, will serve breakfast sandwiches, paninis and salads. Scheduled to serve until midnight, the hotel lounge will be one of few late-night dining options in the city.
Farrington, who owns other commercial properties downtown, knows that the area’s reputation has taken a hit. His tenants along construction-burdened Main Street, for instance, are particularly struggling. But he’s not concerned about filling leases, for either apartments or businesses. The hotel’s opening — and, he says, there are already reservations on the books — is likely to pique public interest.
“We wouldn’t be building it if we didn’t think people want to live here,” he said. “What’s happening down here — it’s the synergy. It’s gonna grow.”
Correction, September 10, 2025: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that a sculpture at Burlington Square had been tagged with graffiti. The marks are actually part of the sculpture’s design.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Hope Rises From ‘the Pit’ | The housing and hotel project formerly known as CityPlace is finally opening — but in a very different Burlington.”
This article appears in Sept 10-16, 2025.
