The past year has brought a flurry of developmental activity to the city of Burlington, where several high-profile projects are on track to break ground after receiving the city’s regulatory approval.
Among the city’s more noteworthy new projects are two multifamily developments that received a green light from Burlington’s city council shortly before Thanksgiving.
During a regularly-scheduled meeting on November 19, the council unanimously approved the zoning for 275 high-end apartments that Philadelphia-based developer Sam Switzenbaum had proposed on 29 acres along Rural Retreat Road. Switzenbaum’s plans had previously encountered some friction before the city’s planning and zoning commission, although the developer managed to win over the council through concessions that included one sixth reduction in his overall unit count.
That same evening, the council also agreed to tweak the zoning for another 200-plus apartments that it had initially approved along St. Mark’s Church Road in 2022. Although abandoned in the midst of site preparations, this project had been quite popular with city officials due to the original developer’s inclusion of sidewalks and other infrastructure improvements in exchange for some latitude in the city’s development rules. These assorted concessions were ultimately preserved in the latest version of this project, which a Charlotte-based developer had proposed in order to increase the original unit count by 6 more apartments.
Alongside these proposed additions to Burlington’s stock of rental apartments, the past year has seen some significant commercial and industrial projects come through the city’s planning department. These ventures include a 196-acre “employment center” in eastern Guilford County that received the city council’s zoning approval in August. Meanwhile, a Kansas City concern closed on a real estate deal in October that could lay the foundation for a 187,500-square-foot speculative warehouse along Whites Kennel Road.
The past calendar year also marked a potentially pivotal point in the saga of Burlington’s former Western Electric Plant, which has sat largely dormant since the U.S. Army offloaded this once bustling industrial facility in 2004.
Thanks, in part, to sustained pressure from city officials, the Army has agreed to embark on a multi-year cleanup of this site – whose residual contamination has been one of the primary barriers to its hopes for redevelopment. In the opening months of 2024, contractors in the Army’s employ hauled off tons of contaminated soil from the 22-acre site. In the meantime, the Army has convened a restoration advisory board to weigh in on the plant’s ongoing transition back to civilian use.
In the coming year, city officials hope to announce even more business-related developments as Adam Shull formally takes over as the city’s new director of economic development – filling a post that had been vacant since January of 2023.
The city, for its part, has also done its share to transform the local skyline during the course of 2024.
At this point, contractors in the city’s employ have yet to wrap up work on a new, $4-million pickleball complex at Burlington’s City Park, which was expected to be ready for action some time this fall.
The city’s recreation department has nevertheless enlisted the services of a firm called Sports Facilities Companies to manage the complex once it’s complete. In the meantime, the city council held a closed door discussion
City officials are also pressing ahead with a number of other projects that the city’s voters approved when they signed off on $68,500,000 in general obligation bonds in November.
First up when the city issues the first of these bonds in April are $16.5 million in street repairs and sidewalk improvements, as well as an $11 million expansion of Burlington’s Paramount Theater and a $6 million superstructure for the Maynard Aquatic Center.
Absent from this initial sale is $30 million in bonds that voters approved for a new “sportsplex” on the western side of the city. City officials have yet to do any of the preliminary ground work needed for this project’s voter-approved bonds to go to market.
