Life in the 'dead zone'

Transcription

1 Life in the 'dead zone' Homeowners near airport watch neighborhood disappear Burlington Free Press: John Briggs June 25, 2012 Gary Shepard at 1 Patrick St., his home near the Burlington International Airport in South Burlington. The Burlington Airport s neighborhood, sound buffeted, is going away, piece by piece, like a landscapeshifting Stephen King novel or like Detroit, changing the daily landscape for those who remain. The noise from the airport is too loud for residential life according to Federal Aviation Administration guidelines, and the houses are being bought by the airport and torn down. It is still a pleasant neighborhood with tall trees and deep, well tended lawns. Many houses have flower gardens. Airport Parkway has become a throughway from South Burlington to Colchester one woman who lives there says backing from her steep driveway is often an adventure. The side streets, Dumont Avenue,

2 Patrick and Maryland streets, North Henry Court are still a testament to the post war housing boom that gave cash pressed families a respectable address and neighborhood to call home. Now, it is a neighborhood marked by empty lots and dozens of houses marked with quarantine like yellow signs, South Burlington s zoning permit to demolish a single family home. The signs don t explain why. In conversation and virtually everyone wants to talk about what s happening themes emerge: nostalgia for what was, irritation at the airport s lack of communication with people in the sound zone and a feeling that forces greater than a single homeowner have decided the neighborhood is of less value than an expanding airport. Often, conversations about the change are tinged with sadness that once familiar sounds and a neighborhood pulse are becoming past tense. I d like to keep my neighborhood, said Beverly Darling, who lives on Maryland Street, but it s too late now. Now, it s going goodbye. It s going to happen, said her neighbor across the street, Tricia Phillips, who observed that her family s dog and another dog two houses down give some protection against burglars entering the empty house next door. I hate to see them go, said Sam Tatro, an 82 year old man living alone on Dumont Avenue with houses coming down or condemned on all sides. There was a nice one, he said, pointing to an empty lot across the street and remembering the house and family which used to be there. At Christmas, the streets were always lit with Christmas lights, said Lynda Emch, who raised a family on North Henry Court and sold to the airport in April. She will move soon to St. Albans after 40 years on the culde sac. Her flower garden, now in summer bloom, won t survive the bulldozers. There were other kids, she said. It s just not the neighborhood it was. It s sad to see things deteriorate. Deterioration is just one description of what s happening. South Burlington City Council Chairwoman Rosanne Greco changed her mind about the merit of basing the Air Force s new fighter/ground support warplane, the F 35A, at the airport in part because it would expand the area of residence/airport incompatibility. Other politicians, including Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger, Gov. Peter Shumlin and Vermont s congressional delegation, have spoken in support of the deployment. Even those who are outside the high sound zone are forced to consider leaving, as they try to calculate the hit to their home value in the changed neighborhood and factor in the possible expansion of the noise zone if the

3 new F 35A planes are based at the airport. It s a really hard thing as they see people struggling, some leaving, Former City Councilor Meaghan Emery said. It s a very painful thing. By the numbers The airport avoids language suggestive of loss. In an e mail to the Free Press, Interim Director of Aviation Bob McEwing spoke of the Airport Improvement Program to describe the broad changes in South Burlington. Numbers describe the neighborhood. The airport has purchased 119 residential properties and 12 commercial properties since 1990, McEwing said. This year, he said, the airport will buy 14 more homes and lots and trees and gardens and backyard swings at a cost of approximately $5.1 million. In the past the money was 95 percent federal, 3 percent state and 2 percent local. The ratio this year changes to 90 percent; 6 percent and 4 percent local. McEwing said money comes down the pipeline unpredictably. The availability of funding varies... and is determined yearly, he said. The Airport has been fortunate to receive the funding that it has over the past few years when the size of the program was doubled to help residents within the (65 decibel zone) and above to sell and relocate. An appeal by a resident to halt the demolitions has been decided now in the city s favor, clearing the way for approved tear downs to resume by July 16, if no further appeal is made. Logwood Street resident George Maille had argued that because the use of the demolished properties would change after demolition, a separate site plan review was required for each house. The Development Review Board on June 14, in a unanimous ruling, disagreed, saying the residential use was not being converted to another. Thus, McEwing said, in reference to that decison, the homes may or may not come down this year depending on the length of (time it takes) to get this sorted out. We want to remove the homes, but we can t until this is resolved. The Development Review Board ruling, if it holds, will allow demolition to move ahead on 54 homes. Good neighbors gone Sam Tatro has lived at 38 Dumont Ave. since July 1973, backed up against the airport taxiway. He is a retired mechanic, driver, dispatcher and manager I did everything who worked for the Vermont Transit

4 Company. He plans to stay put in his home, even as house after house on his street falls to the airport s wrecking crew. He doesn t deny descriptions of the airport as an economic driver for the region or begrudge it its expansion, and he s not banging on the airport s door to find out what they ll pay for his house. I m probably number one on the list. I m in the high sound, 70 something, he said with a nod to the airport s line of eligible houses which fall within the 65 plus decibel zone and which under Federal Aviation Administration guidelines are unsuitable for residences because of the noise. I worked too hard on this to make it a retirement home, he said sitting in his neat living room and pointing to an oil painting from 1986 of the house the same clean yellow then as it is now, but now with an expanded kitchen and enclosed back porch and the new tree in the painting now mature. As long as I have two hands and two feet, I ll be here. I done a lot of work on it. Tatro has no complaints against the airport or its noise Hell, I m used to it.... The airport was here before I was. But he regrets the outward flow of neighbors. There was three on the corner, he pointed toward the end of the street where houses have already come down. Six torn down and eight more to go. They re all moving out. They re all good neighbors. No one bothers you. On Patrick Street, Gary Shepard has lived in South Burlington for more than a half century and in his current house since 1999 has had an empty house next door for more than a year fly paper for riff raff, as someone other than Shepard put it, who break in to the neighborhood s empty houses to steal copper pipes or for other reasons. Matt Harding, the airport s facilities foreman, pointed to a pulled out bathroom sink in the empty house at 206 Airport Parkway as evidence of copper thieves at work. And apart from thieves, he said, The empty houses attract vandals that require his crew to replace a half dozen broken windows a week. Like others in the neighborhood, Shepard is in stasis waiting in what he calls the dead zone for the airport to get the money and put him on its list. He figures he and his wife have five years left, at most, in their house. I hate to give this up, he said, showing off his back yard garden to a visitor. It was a good neighborhood and it still is and could be. It s a shame they re giving up all this affordable housing.

5 I think it s wrong, he continued with a gesture to the neighborhood. It s all the affordable housing in South Burlington. The old families that were South Burlington will either be living in a condo or not living in South Burlington anymore. These houses were the people who invested in South Burlington before it was a bedroom community. On Airport Drive, a father and son have divergent opinions. For Alex Proulx, 19, the neighborhood has been his home, and he grew up with friends nearby and went to Chamberlin School. Our neighborhood... is being ripped up and torn down, he said. His father, Jerry, who runs a caning business out of his home, acknowledges Alex is more wedded to the neighborhood than he is. I don t fault them for needing to expand, he said of the airport. Though he laments the loss of affordable housing and says his business benefits from the convenient location, South Burlington, he says, is not my ideal place for Vermont. He s ready to move and is waiting for a price and date from the airport. My future is uncertain here, he said. It would be nice to know I could sell it and buy something else. Jerry Proulx hasn t gotten any official letter from the airport about a buy out, he said, but unlike others in the neighborhood, he has no complaints on that score. They re always willing to talk to you over there, he said. They don t call you. You have to call them, Gary Shepard said. You don t hear from anyone whatsoever, said Bonny Deforge, whose house is next to Sam Tatro s on Dumont Avenue. There s never any conversation with them on a personal or business level. It s very sad. You never really know what s going on. Like many others in the neighborhood, the Deforges have stopped putting money into the house. We ve let things go, she said. We wanted to replace windows, carpets, the back porch... Things we would ve taken care of, we haven t. So that s sad. Deforge is more upset by the disappearing neighborhood than Sam Tatro. That s just nasty, she said of a condemned, empty house across the street. At one time we had homeless people there. You can t call it a neighborhood anymore. You don t see people walk no more. It s not appealing, I guess.

6 Her family, like many others, is waiting to learn when they will move from their house with its affordable mortgage and whether the price they get will cover the cost of a new house. Her husband, who runs his construction business from a basement office, has lived in town for 30 years and is nearing retirement age. It s scary, she said. But, it is noisy. A few houses up, on Airport Parkway, Dorothy Kilby Turcotte said her house shakes when the F 16s fly out. I like to have those sticky things on my windows, she said, but they won t stay on. For Bonny Deforge, right up against the airport fence, the noise is demonstrated by her cats. They panic when the F 16s take off, she said. They smash into the door. They run for cover. One of the cats, Tasha, is 22. You d think she d be used to it, Deforge said.