A Parade on Church Street

Now that you've watched the videos documenting the birth of the Church Street Marketplace, it's time to celebrate it!

On Wednesday August 29th at 2pm, the marketplace will be the location of an event to celebrate its 30th anniversary and to dedicate the 124 foot long Trompe L'oeil mural "Everyone Loves a Parade!"

The mural has been going up on the side of the Banana Republic building, along the alley that connects the Mall block to the Marketplace Parking Garage.

The mural is a hyper-realistic drawing with a colorful cast of characters from Vermont past and present, including Grace Potter, Peter Clavelle, Miro Weinberger… and Bill Truex, the Vermont architect behind the creation of the Church Street marketplace.

You can read more about the 30th anniversary celebration from the press release on the Church Street Marketplace website, and in this article from Seven Days.

Church Street Storytellers

Those of us who live and work in the Burlington area may take for granted the lively commercial and cultural activity of the downtown Church Street Marketplace, the artistic and economic heart of the city. But have you ever wondered just how this pedestrian–only area of 4 city blocks came to be?

The Marketplace officially opened in 1981. In conjunction with its 30 year anniversary, the Church Street Marketplace Association recently released a series of 4 documentary videos with interviews of the key people who worked to turn this crazy idea into a reality.

At the center of this group of individuals was Bill Truex, Principal Emeritus of TruexCullins and the architect of the initial marketplace design.

Part 1 takes a look at what initially inspired the founders of the Church Street Marketplace. Bill Truex is joined by Pat Robins, the chair of the Church Street Marketplace Commission, U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, former Burlington mayor Peter Clavelle, Ernie Pomerleau of Pomerleau Real Estate, and many others who were instrumental in developing the initial concepts.

Part 2 describes how the idea for closing the street evolved and the early tests that made it happen. The video features Bill Truex and Pat Robins, the chair of the Church Street Marketplace Commission, who talk about the early experiments with closing the street in the 1970s. Some of the first special events that experimented with closing the street to automobiles included arts and crafts festivals. These events were a big success and were instrumental in paving the way for permanently closing the street a few years later.

Part 3 tells the story of the investment and construction. The construction of the pedestrian marketplace was a major disruption to the downtown businesses at the time, but with perseverance and creative thinking, the merchants and customers made the best of a difficult situation. This is the story of a successfully managed project in the middle of perhaps the busiest commercial block in the state!

And the 4th and final video talks about the role of the Church Street marketplace today. 30 years after its initial construction, this is an area that has become an arts and cultural destination, an economic engine for the city (and the state), and an award-winning example of great urban design, one of the 10 Great Public Spaces in America according to the American Planning Association.

 

You can see more photos of the drawings, models and demonstration projects from the 1970s in this blog post we published last year.

Flashback Friday: the Richmond Blood Center

It's another Flashback Friday on the blog as we look back to some of the classic TruexCullins projects of decades past. Today's feature is a Bill Truex project from 1984. Bill designed a number of Red Cross Blood Centers throughout the United States, including those in Burlington Vermont, Hartford Connecticut, and this one in Richmond Virginia:

The Richmond Metropolitan Blood Center provides four basic services: it recruits donors; tests the collected units of blood; processes it into components; and distributes the components to hospitals. In this building, the design addresses the need to control and standardize the service offerings of the Blood Center while providing excellent customer service, in a climate that is usually met with fear and mistrust.

On the exterior, a prevalent steel framework is the dominant feature, providing a clear demarcation of the entry to welcome visitors. A fabric canopy is in place during summer months to control solar heat gain and is removed during winter months.

Long before 'sustainability' became the buzzword it is today, Bill was incorporating green design strategies into his early work. At the Richmond Blood Center, a heat recovery process was used to maximize energy efficiency. Blood processing is a refrigerated process that emits heat. The processed heat is recovered and redistributed back into the heating and cooling systems. The laboratories would become uncomfortably hot if the generated heat was not gathered in ducts for redistribution. Along with being energy efficient, this ensures that thermal comfort in the laboratories is not compromised.

In addition to the colorful mechanical system on the building interior - critical to the operation of the facility - expansive glazing and an open plan layout allows daylight to penetrate all the public spaces within the facility. The northeast and northwest faces of the building were planned to be bermed into the earth to control and insulate against prevailing winds and weather.

Here are some views of the light and color-filled interior:  Click to view full-size.

 

Flashback Friday: the Church Street Marketplace

Today we are opening the archives to share some projects from the very early days of TruexCullins.  For this first ‘Flashback Friday’, we dug out some vintage photos from the making of the Church Street Marketplace.

This summer marks the 40-year anniversary of the first demonstration project on Church Street, when, in 1971, the busy street was temporarily closed to traffic to test the feasibility of a new pedestrian core for Burlington’s downtown.  The project was the brainchild of Bill Truex and a small group of Burlington’s civic leaders, and the success of the event led to the active planning and design of the project over the following decade.

Bill developed the first design concept in 1975.  A two-level scheme was considered in 1978, with open courtyards and bridges connecting two levels of outdoor retail space.

As originally conceived, the Church Street Marketplace was to be a four block pedestrian space anchored at the south end by City Hall and City Hall Park and at the north end by an iconic, early 1800’s Unitarian Church. The four blocks were the heart of commercial Burlington, with a diverse array of shops and second floor offices and apartments. The initial phase closed vehicular traffic for only the center two blocks, but the success of the space ultimately resulted in the closing of the north and south blocks as well. Several new parking structures were planned in conjunction with the Marketplace, and the transit loop provided public transportation to the center of Burlington.

Substantial completion of the marketplace occurred in 1981.  Today, 30 years later, the Marketplace continues as the civic and commercial center of Burlington. 

It is not without some irony that today we also celebrate the 41^st annual Earth Day.  While not explicitly an “environmental” project, the Marketplace is in actuality a fine example of environmentally sound design practices.  The space has effectively reinforced the public realm of the city and functions as an extremely active space day and night, throughout the year. Pedestrian traffic and amenities have been established, encouraging citizens, students and visitors to forgo their vehicles and move about on foot and by bicycle. The space is accessible to those in wheelchairs and children are free to roam and play amongst the rocks and seating areas.

In 1997, the National Trust for Historic Preservation granted its Great American Main Street Award to the Church Street Marketplace, and in 2008, the Marketplace was honored by the American Planning Association as one of the 10 Great Public Spaces in America.  Bill Truex’s vision for the project lives on, with its positive impact on the environment of our city.