Higher Ground Aim To Create Burlington Destination For Music

by Lionel Casey

Burton – a international pioneer in skiing – is becoming a member of forces with other well-known Vermont companies in hopes of bringing something new to its community in Burlington’s South End. If the town approves, the Burton campus will be the brand new home of Higher Ground and other attractions.

Audio from this tale will be published.

Higher Ground Aim To Create Burlington Destination For Music 3

Burton owns two aspect-by-way of-side homes on Industrial Parkway, both former General Dynamics centers.

One building is filled with offices and a retail outlet; the other houses a mishmash of entities, together with the enterprise’s research and development area, archive storage, and workplaces for the nonprofit Chill Foundation. But there are also more than 30,000 square toes of vacant business area.

Burton moved to Burlington from southern Vermont in 1992, just as skiing and the Burton emblem started. Now Burton is partnering with different location corporations to create what they wish might be a vacation spot for locals and traffic alike.

There are approximately a half-dozen ability partners at the venture, including Burton and Higher Ground, neighborhood restaurants, Talent Skatepark, and the Chill Foundation.

Justin Worthley, senior vice president of human assets at Burton, said that it bought the construction around the corner when Burton outgrew its headquarters.

“At that time, in 2007, our plan turned into essentially to top off both buildings and in reality construct a connector building in between, due to the fact the corporation had simply been in this loopy boom trajectory,” Worthley explained.

But the recession hit in 2008, together with some awful winters for snow sports activities. Burton pivoted its business model, and lots of that 2d building became storage space.

Then, a bit over a year ago, Worthley ran into Higher Ground partner Alan Newman at the airport. According to Newman, Higher Ground is in the market for a new space.

“We need a brand new, extra cutting-edge venue,” Newman said Wednesday. “We’ve been looking for a while. We love our modern-day vicinity. We’ve looked at renovating it a pair of times to bring to it what we experience we need to do to serve the growing tune network here certainly, and we have not been capable of determine out how to get it completed within the cutting-edge place.”

Worthley invited Newman and his accomplice Alex Crothers to test out Burton’s area. But Newman said he became already acquainted, from certainly one of his preceding enterprise ventures: Magic Hat Brewing Company.

“When we firstly moved Magic Hat from Flynn Avenue to South Burlington, the gap that we’re talking about for Higher Ground became the space that I desired for the brewery — however, General Dynamics became right here, and they were now not equipped to move out,” Newman stated. “So, in some approaches, it almost looks like coming domestic to me if we can pull it off.

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