CITY OF SOUTH BURLINGTON
South Burlington Designated City Center Area
Community Identity Workshop 00/00/00 and 00/00/00.
Community Identity
and Building Design
Determining the size, appearance, and placement of the City Hall Government building presents a challenge and an opportunity: a challenge to understand and express the communities identity, and an opportunity for city government to take a leadership position in shaping the community’s future. The Technical Advisory Committee explored the question of identity through round table discussion, a visual survey (35mm slides) of South Burlington, and preference selection from an inventory of images provided by the consultants. The visual survey revealed a prosperous suburban community, with a strong emphasis on open space, outdoor recreational facilities, neighborhoods of single family homes, low density apartment complexes, and strip retail commercial development along the two main thoroughfares (Williston Road and Dorset Street). In addition to commercial strips and residential neighborhoods, the community’s landscape includes parks and golf courses, agricultural cultivation, and undeveloped vestigial woods and wetlands. Burlington International Airport also has a strong presence in South Burlington’s landscape. The community is very automobile oriented, but also supports the Chittenden County Transportation Authority’s public bus transportation system.
Two general visual characteristics contribute most to South Burlington’s identity. Virtually all development and construction has occurred after World War II with independent local government being established in 1950. The community’s history and built environment is thus much newer than typical Vermont communities. But despite its new, suburban character, the surrounding Green Mountain and Champlain Valley environment still has a strong presence. The Vermont rural and forest landscapes are very much a part of South Burlington’s identity.
The Technical Advisory Committee sees South Burlington as a prosperous, contemporary, suburban community with a retail and service economic base set in the beautiful Vermont landscape. The community is primarily interested in advancing the general quality of life, specifically through development of its educational and recreational resources. Some more limited discussion centered on what might shape the future of South Burlington’s identity. The face of retail commerce is changing, influenced by the pressures of “big box” and Internet retailers. A growing portion of the city’s population have access to the internet and are using it more for shopping, service, recreational and business needs. Although South Burlington has grown as a suburban edge to Burlington, it has a very different opportunity for the future. It is at the confluence of ground and air transportation, it is centrally and conveniently located for the University of Vermont, Saint Michael’s College, Champlain College, the Fletcher Allen Medical Center, IBM Corporation, IDX Systems Corporation, and General Dynamics. In addition to being a residential, recreational and retail center, it has the opportunity to become an information systems hub, a portal to the flow of contemporary information.
To explore the impact of identity on building design the Technical Advisory Committee reviewed a line up of building and outdoor space “mug shots”, selecting those most expressive of the community’s identity. Out of this exercise emerged a consensus for contemporary buildings, traditional building materials, landscapes that recall the natural, uncultivated environment and buildings within larger open civic spaces.
4.10 Community Identity: bedroom community; retail economic base; quality of life and recreation top priority
4.20 Visual survey: strip development; suburban housing (single family, two and three story walk up apartments; recreation facilities;
4.30 Image Preferences
TECHNICAL ADVISORY
COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATIONS
Acknowledge the car.
Recognize South Burlington as a “bedroom community”.
Recognize South Burlington as a “retail community”.
Take advantage of our beautiful setting.
Recognize Parks and Recreation as dominant.
Be user friendly and welcoming.
Give the City something modern, contemporary and something to be proud of.
Provide orientation to Vermont’s natural landscape
Embrace the car.
Create a center for an e-city.
Create a large civic space and put the building in it.
Make the building about community, information and communication.
Respond to the view of Camel’s hump.
Make a park as the centerpiece.
Create drive through service.
New location for existing pond.
Views to Camel’s hump from within the civic space and within the building.
A civic green space for the building site.
A pond.
Vehicular access through the building.
The building as part of Main Street.
A ceremonial entrance.
A boulevard.
Concealed, centralized public parking.
A pedestrian way through the building.
A visible City Council chamber.