Folks want to know: What’s happening with the O’Brien Community Center?
Champlain Housing Trust plans to purchase the O'Brien Community Center, located at 32 Mallets Bay Avenue, from the City of Winooski and renovate the property to accommodate new and existing tenants.
The City of Winooski is poised to sell the O’Brien Community Center to the Champlain Housing Trust after 15 years of ownership. Renovations are expected, and changes in tenancy are possible.
“Cities are not designed to be landlords,” Winooski City Manager Elaine Wang said. “That’s not how we’re set up, and we’re not very good at it.”
The city and nonprofit have been discussing the sale since last year. While no purchase agreement has been finalized, plans are well underway for the community center's future.
Champlain Housing Trust’s mission aligns well with the purpose of the O’Brien center, which houses services like a library and community health clinics, Wang said.
The housing trust owns and develops affordable housing with the goal of raising folks from homelessness to homeownership, said Michael Monte, the nonprofit’s CEO. The Burlington-based organization also focuses on the development and management of community-focused facilities.
“What I don't want to do is take away from what's [at the O’Brien Community Center] now because I think it's very good now,” Monte said. “But we're hoping that we can bring in some other things that will improve or enhance it a little bit.”
The O’Brien Community Center houses several community services, such as the Winooski Memorial Library, VT Works for Women and Community Health Centers of Burlington’s Winooski family health branch. Maintaining the building as a community center is important to the city officials, and that’s a big reason why they approached the housing trust to purchase and manage the property.
“It's designed to be a community center, right? That's in the title,” said Wang. “Once we're no longer the owners, a lot of our leverage goes away, so this is when we want to be asking that question.”
The housing trust does not anticipate many changes in tenancy.
“We’re still working through who is going to be in the building,” Monte said. “I don't think there's going to be necessarily a lot of changes, but there may be some.”
Wang said the pending purchase agreement hinges on retaining a favorable lease and space for the Community Health Centers of Burlington.
“We need to make sure that the Health Centers of Burlington have something that works for them because they are an important anchor tenant, and it's an important service for that location,” said the city manager. “Their continued tenancy in that building is important for the long-term sustainability for other uses in that building.”
As of last week, the housing trust had solidified the health center’s tenancy, renovating its space and expanding programs and services, said Monte.
Ahead of the final agreement — which must be approved by the city council — the nonprofit is shoring up proposals for how the purchase will be financed, how rents will be set, the management arrangement at the facility and specific property improvements. The group hopes to secure state and federal grants to help fund the project.
“Me and the [city] director of real estate development actually fist-bumped each other after yesterday's meeting, thinking that we’ve got something that's going to be a lot of fun and really, really good,” Monte said.
Once started, Monte said renovations at the site would likely take at least two to three years to complete.
The nonprofit recently finished construction of a shared ownership housing development in Winooski, Butternut Grove Condominiums, which neighbors the O’Brien Community Center. Monte said that investing in community assets in the neighborhoods of their housing projects is essential to its mission.
“We have, over the course of time, understood that wherever we might do housing, wherever we're doing neighborhood development, those kinds of things, we really need to also focus on the commercial or the community-based needs of the neighborhood,” Monte said.
He said the nonprofit plans to talk with its current tenants and the Winooski community through public comment opportunities to get feedback on the project.
“I know we’re not going to do this in a vacuum and not ask anybody,” he said. “It’s not going to be that — it’s going to be the opposite.”