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Livable Communities Winner Brings Vitality to Vermont
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Winooski Falls in northwest Vermont was a 2008 Livable Communities Awards winner. | On the banks of the Winooski River in northwestern Vermont is one of the largest downtown redevelopment project in the history of the state, Winooski Falls.
Described as Vermont’s downtown neighborhood, Winooski Falls features mixed-income and intergenerational housing, retail and office space and open, natural space in a vibrant urban setting.
Winooski Falls, nestled in the Burlington suburb of Winooski with a population of 9,000, is a 2008 winner of the Livable Communities Awards sponsored by NAHB and AARP. The awards recognize builders, remodelers and developers for creative and unique homes and community projects that improve the daily comfort, ease and safety of their residents and highlight the critical elements needed for a livable community.
Developed by HallKeen, The Braverman Company and New Boston Fund, Winooski Falls was conceived using town-planning principles to promote, sustain and preserve Vermont’s small-town way of life.
The community features four well-appointed residential and commercial structures bridging downtown Winooski and the riverfront.
A riverfront walkway and several public transportation options connect residents to vital services, shopping, restaurants, two college/university campuses, the largest hospital in the state and nearby downtown Burlington.
Community building, adaptive reuse and historic preservation were major cornerstones for developing Winooski Falls, which was created in partnership with local, state, federal and nonprofit agencies.
- Spinner Place — completed in February 2006 — is a 136,000-square-foot mixed-use, six-story building. The first floor contains 16,000 square feet of street-accessible, neighborhood-serving retail spaces. The upper floors feature 312 bedrooms of university housing in clusters of two- or four-bedroom suites adjoining a common kitchen and living area.
Building scale and massing were carefully considered in order to respect existing historic buildings within Winooski’s downtown, including the Champlain Mill and the upper Block.
- Keen’s Crossing — completed in 2007 — features 216 one-, two- and three-bedroom, mixed-income, intergenerational rental housing units.
- The Cascades feature 140 luxury condominiums, half of which have been built in phase one of the community, with the rest being built in phase two.
- The Champlain Mill features 100,000 square feet of restored, mixed-use commercial and office space.
Public transportation has been a vital component of the project’s success. Project stakeholders — including the city of Winooski and Champlain College and the University of Vermont, both in Burlington — worked with the Chittenden County Transportation Authority and Campus Area Transportation Management Authority to provide public transportation from Winooski Falls to the colleges’ campuses.
The newly-built Riverwalk also links existing downtown Winooski with the project through a 104-acre riverside natural preserve. To encourage pedestrian use as well as to encourage outside seating in the development’s restaurants, sidewalks are nine feet wide.
Periodic bump-outs channel traffic away from pedestrians and parked cars and provide convenient crossing points.
For more information about the Livable Communities Awards or to apply, click here, or e-mail Blake Smith at NAHB, or call him at 800-368-5242 x8583.
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The Riverwalk at Winooski Falls |
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