Who Bought Downtown Burlington?
1. Springers & Grand Pianos
Don Sinex bought Burlington Square Mall in 2013 with “a friend.” Or at least that’s how Mayor Miro Weinberger’s office described the $25 million purchase in a 2014 memo. Who spends $25 million with a friend?
Indeed, Don Sinex is bad at pretending he isn’t rich AF. In 2013 he invited the Burlington Free Press into his home — well, a building on his 14-acre “manicured grounds” — so Vermont could get to know him. Read this with a straight face:
Sitting in a converted horse barn at his property in Rutland, with a towering Christmas tree in one corner next to a gleaming black baby grand piano, and his two English Springer Spaniels asleep on the sofa next to him, Sinex talked about the future of Burlington Town Center mall…
Just normal guy doing normal guy stuff with his gleaming baby grand and English Springers.
2. Vacancy By Design
Sinex’s mall project is a divisive issue here in Burlington, one that entered a new chapter in July as opposition groups reached a deal with Sinex that will most likely allow construction to begin. At the peak of the debate, Progressive City Council President Jane Knodell almost lost her seat to community activist Genese Grill in a challenge from the Left that centered on community unrest around the project.
Nobody likes the current mall. It’s a soul-sucking tunnel in the middle of town. This fact, largely, led the mall to proceed through regulatory channels despite fierce opposition.
“We have this fortress that consumes the center of our downtown,” Burlington City Councilor Joan Shannon said by way of explaining her vote to advance the Sinex project.
But more than the basic aesthetic issues with the current mall, advocates of Sinex’s development have cited storefront vacancy as evidence that their project needs to be built ASAP. According to NBC 5 in late 2015, “Sinex has acknowledged the downtown mall property is dying. He thinks it’s further evidence the property needs a serious makeover.” Mayor Weinberger added: “Some of the news we’ve heard with these other stores [closing] really validates why the mall needs to be rebuilt.”
The problem with this line of reasoning is that it is Sinex himself who has been causing the mall to die. Since he purchased the property in 2013, vacancy rates have doubled. Active businesses now occupy less than half of available storefronts. He told the Burlington Free Press that this bleeding out has been intentional.
The bottom line is about 50 percent of the mall’s roughly 165,000 square feet of retail space is empty. Sinex is not worried. According to Sinex, this is by design in advance of the first phase of the mall’s redevelopment. In fact, he needs more stores to either leave the the mall or move to the Church Street side of the structure in order to demolish everything west of where St. Paul street will punch through the property as part of his makeover plans. “The way to look at it is the space back there needs to be 100 percent vacant, so that’s 105,000 square feet out of 165,000 square feet,” Sinex says, pointing to the western end of the mall where the Macy’s sign is visible in the distance. “That would be, by definition, 65 to 70 percent vacant. I’m not even at my goal yet. I’m 15 percentage points more occupied than I want to be.”
Wut? If this is the case how have Sinex and Weinberger been using vacancy rates as evidence of the need for change? One wonders what percentage of Burlington residents know that Sinex has been actively pursuing a 70% vacancy rate since 2013? And how much this has affected the public’s support for this project?
3. Mentored By “Trump-Lite”
Don Sinex learned corporate real estate from Bluhm while working at Bluhm’s JDM Realty in the 1980s. With a net worth of $3,300,000,000, Bluhm is #204 on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans. “Like his flashier contemporary, Donald Trump, Bluhm was one of the handful of men who made it big in the notorious 1980s real estate boom,” said Forbes in 2000. Bluhm’s properties include Four Seasons Hotel and the Ritz Carlton in Chicago. He own parts of two professional sports teams, has a $100 million worth of art, and a floor named after him in New York’s Whitney Museum.
Don Sinex joined Bluhm in 1978, after graduating Harvard Business School. “At JMB, he was in charge of real estate acquisitions and investments in New York City, Washington and Boston. He acquired more than $6.5 billion of assets during his tenure,” reads a corporate profile.
Today, in addition to activities at his own Devonwood Investors, Sinex sits on the board of Immtech Pharmaceuticals. According to their website, Immtech “holds an exclusive worldwide license to develop and commercialize a broad platform of proprietary compounds that encompass several different chemical classes.” In an only-fairly-evil quote geared at potential investors, Immtech states: “Infectious diseases collectively affect billions of people, and the potential sales opportunities are substantial.”
You say “infectious disease,” I say “sales opportunity!”
4. Community vs. Profit Motive
Most people agree that the mall needs to go. But what does Burlington replace it with? I join many residents in feeling uncomfortable handing the keys over to someone who has a spent a lifetime profiting from properties in cities he does not live in; has a worldview created from decades of rubbing shoulders with the richest people in the country; and views diseases as sales opportunities.
It doesn’t help that Sinex and Weinberger have proven willing to use disingenuous reasoning — rather than straight talk — to convince the public to follow their plans. Alongside this, Sinex’s primary method of communicating with the Burlington public this year is super sketchy — paid advertisements masquerading as Burlington Free Press news stories.
Aside from how tall or short or pretty or ugly a project is, many of us believe that day-to-day decisions about the center of our downtown should be made by the types of people who live normal lives here; and place the needs of their neighbors above profit motives. Looking to our city history, this has proved to be an intelligent and meaningful course.
5. Burlington’s Progressive Legacy
Upscale condos were almost built where Burlington’s beautiful, trademark waterfront park exists today. Much of the credit for that save goes to the mayor at that time, Vermont’s current junior senator — democratic socialist Bernard Sanders! The Nation interviewed former CEDO director Michael Montequotes about Bernie’s vision for a “people’s waterfront.”
“Bernie wanted to make sure that it was a place with plenty of open space and public access, where ordinary people could rent a rowboat and buy a hot dog. That wasn’t just for the elite. It was Bernie who set the tone that the waterfront wasn’t for sale.”
A 1983 In These Times profile looked at Bernie’s ambitions for the waterfront:
Public ownership of some key parcels would mean that we will be committed to different priorities. We won’t be out to make a profit.
Contrast that with Don Sinex’s approach to the mall. Describing lessons learned from his mentor, Neil Bluhm, that might be applied to the Burlington Square Mall, Sinex told the Free Press:
He’s a very smart guy. He said, ‘Let me tell you something about real estate.’ I said, ‘Yes sir.’ He said, ‘You make your money when you buy, not when you sell. Selling is a recognition of a good buy. Always remember that.’ I will. I will always remember that.
Returning to The Nation:
Burlington is now widely heralded as an environmentally friendly, lively, and livable city with a thriving economy, including one of the lowest jobless rates in the country. Burlingtonians give Sanders credit for steering the city in a new direction that, despite early skepticism, proved to be broadly popular with voters.
Again, we must decide the kind of community and economy we want here in Burlington.
6. What Kind of Development, For Whom?
Don Sinex’s mall will probably be built at this point. Looking backward, it’s true that it’s not worth crying over spilt milk. Looking forward, we cannot predict how the mall will turn out. But with City Council and mayoral elections coming up in March, it is certainly worth analyzing where we are heading and where we have been.
Or is this yet another case of straight, white men playing Monopoly with our livelihoods?
There are many community benefits to certain types of development. But our question should always be — who is benefiting and who is getting left behind? Contained in this general question should be a number of specific questions, including: which social groups are being enriched and empowered? Is this power and money going to women? People of color? New Americans? Queer people? Muslims? Disabled folks? Or is this yet another case of straight, white men playing Monopoly with our livelihoods?
Profit motives will never look after us as citizens. Whether we believe in working with or against neoliberal economics, it’s up to us as citizens to create the future we want to see in the center of our city. That certainly remains true at this stage of the project. Let’s be active in creating the city we want for ourselves; a city that works for everyone and not just the type of person who can purchase a mall with a friend.
Eric B. Maier is a musician living in Burlington, VT . He leads the organization Future Fields and is a member of the band Madaila.
https://medium.com/@ericbmaier/who-bought-downtown-burlington-725c049979f4
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